Photos by Ralph Freso
If you think young people just have their heads buried in their phones, you haven’t walked through the Club and Community Fair at Grand Canyon University.
The vast floor of the Canyon Activity Center was covered with tables for 95 of the 110 active student clubs, 40 Club Sports teams and 20 vendors and businesses, with thousands of students who arrived this week on campus walking shoulder-to-shoulder, heel-to-heel to discover ways they won’t be on their phones.
It’s the biggest turnout Clubs and Organizations Coordinator Jacqueline Nguyen has seen in her four years at GCU, where the number of clubs and participants continues to grow. “We are happy to see the student body being lively and active,” she said.
The variety of interests is astounding – and will grow as typically 20 more clubs are added during the year.
First stop: Give it all ‘ya got
The club is Girls Gains. Girls who lift weights meet twice a week to lift and also hold classes on nutrition (more protein is a big one for women) and technique.
“The gym is very much dominated by men. Don’t be intimidated by it. Get in there and take your space,” said Amanda Miller, the club’s events coordinator, who says lifting weights makes her feel productive and gives her an outlet to lift away stress. “I like doing back and thighs. It’s great to have a great looking back.”
Sitting at a table just down from those strong women is another student who knows about bodies – Nathaniel Brink, president of the Henry Van Dyke Carter Club. The club gathers to draw the human body in GCU’s cadaver lab. The connection between art and science makes them better at both.
Brink said it allows him to see the details of anatomy and how it all works together, which is good for a pre-med major. The drawings are incredible, too.
Careers, causes, canyons
The clubs can be centered on academic and career pursuits – among the largest attended clubs are the Women in Business and Student Nursing Association – but just down the aisle, another club is one that pursues a cause.
The International Justice Mission researches human trafficking. Its members feel called to help stop it or at least understand it. Some have been published in GCU’s Canyon Journal of Undergraduate Research, including vice president Mackenzie Purdy. “My dad is a cop. I heard a lot about it,” she said, adding that, as a child, she always wore dog tags with her contact information.
Other clubs are just plain fun. Lopes Outdoors favorites are trips to Sedona and Payson. They can go as a group at a lower cost and a more flexible itinerary than the university trips through GCU Outdoor Recreation, said president Kyleigh Howell, who added that students can sign up on a first-come, first-served basis.
“My favorite is Death Valley. It feels unreal,” she said. “And it’s for two nights, so you get to know people.”
Finding common interests
The most asked-about clubs, Nguyen said, are those centered around common interests or hobbies.
The GCU Cubing Club is one interesting hobby. Numerous colorful cubes – think Rubik’s Cube but in a variety of sizes – sit before club president Ryan Morrison and vice president Nathan Agan.
They twist the cubes through combinations to match colors on each cube side with lightning speed.
“Muscle memory is key,” Morrison said. “I don’t even have to look.”
They study complex algorithms to do a standard 3-by-3 cube in 50 moves or less. It has 43 quintillion combinations, say nothing about the 5-by-5 cube. Morrison said they enter in contests all over, but people who barely know how to do it are welcome, even to compete in tournaments.
And then there are people like Morrison, who doesn't take too much longer than one second to finish a 2-by-2 cube.
Music, of course, is everywhere at GCU – and in the clubs, whether cultural clubs such as the Latino Student Union playing traditional Latin music at its table, or at the Songwriters Guild, where senior Melody Henry has her guitar out.
Henry says that students of all majors gather to write songs together in the GCU Recording Studio – and you don’t even have to play an instrument or have ever written a song.
“When I was a freshman, I was so scared of everything, and I worked on songs by myself,” she said. “Then I went to this club and we’re all writing a song together and get to share our songs with one another.”
It all led her to getting involved in Canyon Worship albums and taking worship arts as a minor, though the songs in the club are of all genres.
The big clubs and new ones
Music brings hundreds to one of the largest clubs – American Kids Country Swing – as they kick up their heels on the CAC Lawn. At Welcome Week’s event last year, nearly 500 students showed up, and 300 joined their first meeting.
“It’s dance,” said president Kyndal Downing, so people from vastly different places can connect. “It’s a taste of home.”
At the center’s far end, among the last stops is a new club that highlights just how unexpected a trip through the fair can be. The Common Thread’s table holds embroidery and knitting projects, but this arts-and-crafts group is anything but stereotypical.
Two of the club officers at the table are men – and all this crocheting and stitching is about more than you think. It builds manual dexterity.
“He wants to be a heart surgeon, and I want to be a dentist,” said Sebastian Salazar, standing next to his friend Mohammed Ramadan, both biology majors. “If you want to work on a heart, you want to be able to work well with your hands on small things.
“And girlfriends like the homemade flowers.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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