Photos by Ralph Freso
Grand Canyon University Welcome Crew magic doesn’t just happen.
It takes planning.
Coordination.
Contact numbers.
And maps. Lots of maps.
More than 500 Welcome Crew members familiarized themselves with that and more at Friday’s Welcome Crew training at Global Credit Union Arena as they prepared for the big show: GCU Move-In, a three-day, boisterous, high-velocity, high-energy, all-out hyper-spirited affair. It begins today as some 17,000 students move onto campus for the 2025-26 academic year, bathroom caddies in hand.
And the Welcome Crew, which moved onto campus early to prepare for it, is ready to go.
“There are move-in logistics for everyone to know. There’s a check-in process. … They just need to know how to help things run smoothly,” said Brooke Carlson, Welcome Programs’ events and logistics coordinator, who was a commuter when she was a student on campus, just last year.
“I had the best time at GCU … but I wish I had lived on campus,” she said, at least for a time, to have that experience.
Now she wants to make sure the students moving into the campus’ 33 living areas, which this year includes the new seven-story Gila Apartments and a new cyber living-learning community in Encanto, are going to have the best Welcome Week experience.
The same goes for Welcome Crew co-captain Chris Carballo, who’s helping helm the team alongside Alexa Rikberg.
“We’re the most hyped. We have more energy and more happy spirit,” said Carballo, a business management/marketing senior, who is visibly hyped to get Welcome Week going.
He has seen other university move-ins and, for him, there’s just no comparison.
“Obviously, we have the Lord with us, always, and the love people have for GCU makes a big difference,” he said. “All these people who volunteer and are here today, they all choose to (be here).”
His best advice to students at the training session: Smile.
“And, honestly, just be yourself. It might feel embarrassing to jump around in front of strangers you don’t know …” Carballo said, but know that students will remember this important time in their lives. He also emphasized to students that they're not just serving the university, "but we're serving others.”
Move-in in recent years has looked a little different.
Just a few years ago, cars would line up all the way back to Interstate 17 as parents and students made a big push to be the first to get onto campus. Once they did, the Welcome Crew would descend on cars like a move-in maelstrom, unload everything and have students moved into their rooms in minutes.
But Welcome Programs has since quelled much of that getting-onto-campus chaos, with move-in times by appointment for a calmer, smoother experience.
And this year, the Welcome Crew is getting an assist by Global Credit Union employees who are helping students move in.
What hasn’t changed is that unfiltered Welcome Crew spirit that senior Grace Burnette wanted to manifest. She was one of the students at Friday’s training who picked up their gear, such as T-shirts and the like, watched fellow students play an ice-breaker game, Stack Attack, and enjoyed Eegee’s shaved ice at the end of the event.
“I’m so excited,” she said. “I want to welcome the new freshmen and hype them up."
She remembers how nervous she felt her freshman year, then saw all the Welcome Crew members and thought, “But wait! I feel better. I want to do that! I love the energy. I love the hype.”
Senior mechanical engineering major Michael Podlesnik said he’ll be looking to keep up his energy for Welcome Week and partaking “energy drinks, as most students do,” he said.
It will be senior Alanna Stewart’s second time to volunteer on Welcome Crew.
The best advice she heard at the training: hydrate.
“I’ll definitely be drinking water every 20 minutes,” she said, her service dog Daisy by her side. Daisy may be with her for Welcome Week festivities, too, she said; Daisy's outfit is planned.
She said she wants to help students feel that honeymoon phase, that initial feeling of euphoria when arriving on campus “that all freshmen learn about,” she said.
Why she volunteered to serve on Welcome Crew, even if it means standing outside in the 100-plus degree heat for hours?
“I actually really like making people feel welcome," Stewart said. “… And just seeing everybody smile.”
Internal Communications Manager Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at [email protected] or at 602-639-7901.
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