Commemoration kicks off with dedication of campus sculpture
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story originally appeared in the November issue of GCU Magazine.
Ten colleges. Thirty-two residence halls. Five glistening pools. One golf course. 300 acres.Two trips to the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament. Two Chick-fil-A’s. 25,000-plus ground students.
And here’s another number: 75 years.
Grand Canyon University is celebrating its diamond anniversary in 2024, already having published a book dubbed “75 Years of Purpose: 15 Years of Transformation,” written by the Office of Communications and Public Relations. Merchandise emblazoned with the 75th anniversary logo occupies one area of the Lope Shop, and the History and Government Club is in the midst of a 75th anniversary project to tell the University’s story over those seven decades.
And then there’s the unveiling of a metal sculpture from noon to 12:30 p.m. today on Prescott Field by botanical artist Joe Tyler in commemoration of the milestone.
It’s a milestone that the University’s founders never could have envisioned when the seeds were first planted to build a Christian college in Arizona. According to GCU lore, three Baptist pastors – Pastor L.D. White and two others – attending the Southern Baptist Convention on Oct. 29, 1946, were so taken by the idea that they each plunked down a silver dollar to make that idea happen.
It wasn’t just a pledge of money, but a pledge of faith; they challenged others to do the same.
Within 30 minutes, attendees raised about $8,000, a little more than $9 of that from a quart jar of pennies donated by Clara P. Pierce, a widow from Glendale, Arizona. And Dr. Willis J. Ray, who would become the first president at Grand Canyon, hit the Arizona backroads to find more financial support.
Three years later, on Sept. 13, 1949, Grand Canyon College opened with a celebratory parade and barbecue in Prescott, Arizona, with 95 students enrolled. They attended classes in the old Prescott National Guard Armory and bunked in nearby tourist manors.
Leaders quickly realized Prescott couldn’t sustain the campus population and so moved the college to 90 acres of land surrounded by cotton fields in rural west Phoenix. They did it so quickly that there was no time, really, to build a campus.
Builder and trustee A.A. Wallace had less than a month to construct nine new structures while students made do at First Southern Baptist and North Phoenix Baptist churches. Wallace didn’t quite hit the first-day-of-school deadline in September, but about a month after that, those bare-bones structures made their debut.
Grand Canyon College would be bare bones and no-frills in the decades that followed, the budget so slim by 2004 that the school, which became a university in 1989, struggled with $20 million of debt and almost closed.
But then a small group of investors acquired the school and took it to the public markets in 2008. They also hired Brian Mueller as its new president.
Which changed everything.
The influx of capital meant a new life for GCU, a new era marked by a $1.7 billion investment in the campus and a building frenzy that expanded the university. GCU has spilled over those cotton fields and now spans across 300 urban acres. Since 2010, the University has constructed and completed major renovations of 72 buildings or facilities, not including the 32 on-campus dining options or recreational fields or outdoor courts.
It has renovated and taken over management of Maryvale Golf Course, now GCU Championship Golf Course, and turned a Quality Inn and Suites in a once crime-ridden corner of west Phoenix into GCU Hotel, where hospitality students are trained.
It has grown to include 10 colleges with a hands-on approach to teaching, and an entrepreneurial and technology focus designed to lead to jobs.
And GCU has done so without forgetting the community around it and its missional purpose. The University opened the CityServe distribution warehouse to provide household goods and other items to those who need them, partnered with Habitat for Humanity to repair nearby homes, has provided tutoring for K-12 students from those neighborhoods, partnered with the Phoenix Police Department to make the area safe and brought jobs to the community.
“The feeling about this place is special,” said GCU President Brian Mueller.” … “This place was built on the rock. There were winds, and there were storms over the years. It wasn’t always easy. And yet, this place survived.”
Not just survived.
It flourished, as GCU continues to grow colleges and programs – 321 degree programs, emphases and certificates are offered, with University leaders setting its sights on growing the ground campus to 50,000 students.
“It continues to survive, and all of a sudden, God allows it to thrive,” Mueller said. “I believe He did that because it was built on the rock, and that never changes. And we are the recipients of that.”
Don’t know much about history …
You knew GCU was founded in 1949 in Prescott, Arizona.
But did you know these historical tidbits from its past 75 years?
- The school’s nickname might have been the Donkeys. The nickname was whittled down to either the Antelopes or the Donkeys. Grand Canyon’s first students chose to be Lopes.
- GCU’s original colors were maroon and gold. When the move was made to Phoenix, so was a move made to change the colors to not conflict with the colors of Arizona State University. Now, it’s all about the purple, white and black.
- Thunder wasn’t always the University’s mascot. He was preceded by a furry, purple blob called the Purple People Eater.
- Thunder’s name was originally Andy the Antelope, then Johnny Lope.
- Palm trees: 361 of them are peppered across campus.
- More than 260,000 alumni call GCU their alma mater.
- The first graduating class in 1951 included just four students.
- GCU is the largest Christian university in the world.
- It was the home of just two dorms for a long time: Bright Angel Hall women’s dormitory and Kaibab Hall men’s dorm.
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