It takes a village to create a home suite home

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was published originally in the April issue of GCU Magazine, available in the purple bins around campus or digitally.

Photos by Ralph Freso

One night in March tells a lot about living on Grand Canyon University’s campus.

On that night, junior Chloe Brandow, who lives on the first floor of Willow Hall, warmed up to take the stage before 2,473 people in Global Credit Union Arena to sing with her boyfriend, from the fourth floor.

They met in Willow Hall.

They are in love.

He wrote a song for her for the student talent competition. When she was a freshman, she had a hard time fitting in.

Also on that night, freshman Sarai Herrera was on the second floor of Willow Hall, in a room among a huddle of women. They prayed for a troubled student in the center of the huddle, their loving hands resting on her. Herrera was thinking that night, too, about her own troubles, about how she often worries that she can’t get along with people.

When you talk about life on campus, you can focus on the buildings, those colorful, geometric new residence halls and apartments – the 33rd will open in the fall, all but two of them constructed in the last 15 years – and not wonder why 70% of traditional students want to live on campus.

They live in places so new the paint barely has dried, and so equipped that you don’t have to carry your soap down to a communal shower.

You can say that this private university has one of the largest residential campuses of any private university in the land with its own police force and security to make it so safe that officials have to beg many of the 16,841 residents to lock their doors. Or that Niche.com in 2025 has ranked GCU fourth in the nation for Best College Dorms in America.

But that doesn’t tell you what happens on one night, and over a couple weeks, in one residence hall – Willow Hall. Nor can those numbers describe why it’s so popular to live at GCU.

Residents bring all their nerves and insecurities, their hopes and baggage. They put up their family photos and framed “Jesus Loves Me” reminders.

And they find a home.

It doesn’t just happen. It takes a village of people – the leadership of Residence Life, full-time resident directors, student leaders, Spiritual Life groups – to make a home, which can be described inside Herrera’s room in Willow Hall.

Four young women live there, all freshmen, as is the case in the four residence halls that make up The Grove in the northwest corner of campus.

Herrera’s dad bought them a 42-inch flatscreen television on the first day, though they laughed that it was more a dad thing than asked for.

At first, everyone was a bit timid. They looked around the common room in the middle, flanked by large bedrooms on each side shared by two residents, and thought it was way better than the little caves they’d seen family members living in at colleges with older dorms. And each bedroom has its own bathroom, which was a bonus.

“But we wanted to decorate the space to make it homey, not like the boys with LED lights, we wanted to make it feel like a home. So that was our bonding experience. We had to go shopping,” Herrera said.

They picked out an area rug, some wall hangings of butterflies, some flowers. Emerson Harper decorated the door with pink bows.

They started to know one another those first days, Herrera from Texas who speaks her mind, and Harper from California who goes along, and Sayler Phillips from Colorado who likes her independence.

“The first thing we said is, if you have issues, we are going to talk to each other,” Harper said. “Communication has been a big part of this year.”

“I’m more of the blunt one,” Herrera added. “I told them I’m going to keep them accountable and keep it straight up, so I expect the same from y’all as well.”

In going to Chapel, dining on campus and games of solitaire that became an oxymoronic game of multiplayer solitaire, they found it was better together.

They even started to come out of their bedrooms and study together in the middle of the common room.

“My favorite part is having our little homework dates where we all sit together and do our separate assignments,” Harper said. “Having each other around makes it so much better. Then we take a brain break and tell a funny story and have a laughing fit for an hour. The togetherness, that’s it.”

Although Herrera’s mom blessed the room with Psalm 91 upon moving in to protect the young, the group wanted more. They set up a corkboard by the door they called the “prayer board,” with the words “praise, repent, ask, yield.”

It holds messages, everything from who bought ramen noodles last to what boy is out of favor or who is hot and prayers for dates, trips and thanks, such as, “Thank you for this space that we get to call home and use to bless others and build friendship.”

Herrera’s room and Willow Hall are no aberrations among the vast field of GCU’s mostly five- and six-story living areas.

The Department of Residence Life has a mission: To make an ever-growing, large campus feel like a small community. They do that by letting students lead one another and create events so it feels like family.

Each floor has at least two resident assistants, a legion of more than 400 students across campus who pull over shy freshmen to grab a coffee with or lead to huge events, and life leaders who join them in prayer.

“We know when they step outside the building there are thousands of people – (nearly) 25,000 with commuter students – but when they step into their home, we want it to feel welcoming,” said Holly Neely, director of Residence Life. “We want it to feel like a place they can process the emotions of being a college student. Our relational approach
is what keeps them here.”

Twice a month, resident assistants hold events on their floor, and it’s not just ordering a pizza, it’s a curriculum.

In January and February, for example, events focused on self-care, and the next two months was soul-care – finding ways to feed your soul with scripture, friends, hiking, etc.

“We are always trying to teach them something,” Neely said. “We want them to meet someone new, but hopefully there is always a takeaway.”

RAs aren’t on their own. They are trained by Neely’s group of managers, such as Lindsey Piná, who oversee full-time resident directors. Piná was once a director who recalls seeing students on their worst days and best days, including a student who came to her in the middle of the night. She helped her through it, and that student is now in the military. She recently got a note of thanks: “You saved me.”

Resident directors live in the halls or apartments and have offices on the ground floor. Many are married, and some even have children. They often went to school here and wanted to stay. One has even lived on campus for 11 years.

Corinne Webb, a resident director in Ponderosa Apartments, knows why it’s successful.

“You can get a rigorous academic experience everywhere, but you are not going to get the culture you have here,” she said. “We made community assimilation the norm here.”

From the moment a freshman steps on campus, she said, they know it’s a place they can relax and have fun as “we try take the sterile out of it.”… I can’t tell you how much of my workday is with residents who are like, ‘Do you want to play this game?’ And I may not have met them before.”

Webb has led efforts to establish social media branding and identity in each hall, which has creative ownership. Ponderosa, for example, took their tree name to great lengths by establishing a woodsy camp theme on Instagram, while Antelope became “The Big Cat” with a comic-book vibe.

Janelle Dennis, resident director in Willow, said it was hard to pass up living on campus after going here. “It was the best four years of my life,” she said.

She and two other resident directors in Willow each have a team of RAs they meet with and oversee and are a steady hand when roommate conflicts or rules violations arise.

“College is a pivotal moment in their lives. If there’s a roommate conflict, we get to talk with them about why conflict is important and healthy and not judge them and let them cry,” Dennis said. “This is their home away from home, so we want them to feel safe and comfortable.”

The event is Willow’s Wild Fiesta, recently unfolding in the lobby, decorated with balloons and Southwestern flair. Some young men – who live on floors 4-6 – wear cowboy hats or are playing a game of pin-the-mustache on a photo of President Brian Mueller. Others partake in a hot pepper eating contest, only later to be sprawled sweaty on the grass outside.

“I love the Grove. It’s a happy place, always something happening, and everyone is excited with the newness of campus,” said senior Clara Roberts, a resident assistant. “We’re creating an environment where people get to know people.”

Some RAs are telling people where they go to church. Others are serving up the chips and guacamole from Qdoba on campus.

Those 34 dining options, numerous sporting fields, pools, gyms, events and hall activities like this are all 50 paces away, and that makes living here so appealing, said Willow resident director Conner Madeya.

It’s a little town where they feel like they would miss out going off campus, a town that was quickly but expertly built by Pono Construction and designed by architect Caroline Lobo, who used rectangular shapes and colorful panels with a base of brick that showcases the solidity of both tradition and Christian faith.

Resident surveys showed they wanted more apartments, so that’s what they got.

All of the new construction since 2016 has been apartments, which allow students to cook their own meals in a kitchen and have roomy private spaces. It also lends variety to the options, which range from triple occupancy residence halls with three in each room to single occupancy apartments.

Even the costliest single option with a midlevel meal plan remains under the national average cost for food and housing among private nonprofit universities, according to the latest figures from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Freshmen also can self-select where they want to live, which is unusual among universities, and returning students have a streamlined process of signing up roommate groups, said Sarah Castro, director of housing operations.

“GCU made a conscious effort to build what students were asking for,” she said. “We want students to know we care about them, and we know that living on campus is an important part of their experience.” Tristan Carlson, on a ladder putting up balloons at the fiesta, said GCU living goes beyond the buildings.

As an RA, he helped bring out a shy student a couple of years ago who still keeps in touch. It helps by organizing events like the Valentine’s Day he recently held for his floor: Bromance Before Romance. Residents, for example, left protein shakes at doorsteps with a note of appreciation.

But Carlson left one thing out. He also found romance in Willow. And he wrote a song for her.

A few days later, Maya Fernandez had made chili and was serving it to second-floor residents. It fit in with the month’s soul theme because it feeds it, said Fernandez, who is the RA for 17 rooms, including the ladies in Herrera’s room.

It was her first time making – or eating – chili. Back home in New Mexico, they didn’t eat chili. Her parents came from Mexico, and she only spoke Spanish there.

She was scared when she came to GCU two years ago and wanted to go home. During her Christmas break back in New Mexico, a call came from her mother’s work. Her mother had collapsed. When her parents arrived back at their house, her father yelled, “Don’t leave me.”

Her mother had cancer and began treatment, and told her daughter to go back to college, that God was with them. Fernandez hadn’t gone to church much, arguing with her parents about it, but when she returned stricken to campus, she looked out her room and saw people praying together outside.

“I didn’t know anybody, but I could join in. When I told them my story, they prayed over me. That made me feel welcome and a sense of family,” she said.

She began to build a strong relationship with God and later sat on her parents’ bed to talk to them about it for three hours; it calmed her, knowing He was in her corner, as her mom went into remission.

“The girls on the floor, I know I can do that for them. I like to think I’ve been able to give them at least a little bit of peace, knowing if they are going through a hard time, there is a greater power helping them.”

And that is a thing that distinguishes living at GCU. Every floor of every building on campus has a life group, student leaders from Spiritual Life who lead them in Bible study once a week. In what can be the chaos of life on a big campus, it’s a quiet “breath of fresh air,” said Megan Sinden, life groups manager. “It really makes the building feel like home.”

That is where Sarai Herrera got a moment that stuck with her one March night.

The group was visualizing both a happy moment in their life, Jesus by their side, and a lie they told themselves. Herrera visualized dancing with Jesus, but the dance was going poorly because she had told a lie to herself – that because she is outspoken, “In my mind I can’t get along with people and am difficult.”

But the more she danced, the more their steps became easier. “It’s not that I am difficult, I just maybe learned to get along with people. The
word He gave me was harmony. I am His harmony, and we get along.”

She uses that now on the second floor and in her life, even on that night she watched her fellow Willow resident rise to the stage.

Chloe Brandow met Tristan Carlson at Willow in RA training. He saw an open seat next to her at dinner and grabbed it. They talked all night about music, like no one else was there. He fixed her guitar strings.

She once had been a freshman from Colorado who felt out of place, and RAs comforted her. They had that in common, wanting to help people who come from all walks of life to live here.

So he wrote a song to sing to her on the stage of the student event GCU’s Got Talent that March night about never letting her down. And they sang the chorus together.

“It just meant a lot. It showed how he saw me and how much he appreciated me – it just showed his love for me,” said Brandow, who with Carlson, became the romance-rooting interest of Willow and a final note on togetherness and living on GCU’s campus.

"It’s everyone’s favorite story,” she said.

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