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Professors, staff and fellow students all lend a hand for GCU’s unique Move-In. It is part of the culture of the University for employees as well as students to lend a hand at the start of the academic year. While many volunteers would rise early and haul boxes for nothing, the Welcome Week organizers show their appreciation with stylish T-shirts, colorful bandanas and fanny packs for all and a dinner, movie night and pool party for the student volunteers.

  By Theresa Smith GCU News Bureau Just for a moment, forget about winning the top award in every category and focus on the outcome that does not appear in the official results. After days of driving the Grand Canyon University Cheer team, consecutive mornings of listening to their daily devotionals, witnessing their approach to each other, and their evident love amid catching each other with sure hands and an authentic smile, the bus driver was profoundly affected. GCU Cheer coach Emily Stephens, who began the program 11 years ago, was brought to tears when Dean, the bus driver, took her aside and told her that he was thinking about returning to church, and the deciding factor was his observations of her 49-member cheer team, plus Thunder and Thunder’s friends. “It was the most exciting thing for us,’’ she said upon returning from the Universal Cheerleading Association (UCA) camp at the University of California-Santa Barbara. “He said he felt a spirit coming up from the front of the bus. The fact that the group could show him that love and that spirit and represent Christ is remarkable. For him to feel that and make that decision after being with our […]

GCU’s Move-In tradition continues with the ultimate warm welcome, beginning Friday when Welcome Crew members arrive on campus. As students, faculty and staff once again personally move students into their rooms, it sets the tone for a pay-it-forward campus culture. Move-In kicks into high gear on Monday, Aug. 20, and the entire week is filled with activities designed to help freshmen and transfer students make friends and settle in while returning students catch up with friendships and dive into leadership roles.

Bucking the trend at many colleges of upperclassmen moving off campus, there are unprecedented numbers of students moving onto the GCU campus in late August, including the rapidly growing east side. They are drawn by safety, accessibility, affordability and, perhaps most importantly: community. Within the residence halls and apartments, their Resident Directors and Resident Assistants are helping them make friends and their Life Leaders offer Bible study.

GCU’s Theatre Department is in rehearsals for its first play of the season, the dreamy, fairy tale-like comedy “Ring Round the Moon.” The department will change pace for its other submissions for the 2018-19 season: the Shakespeare tragedy “Macbeth,” Peter Pan origin story “Peter and the Starcatcher,” Holocaust drama “Who Will Carry the Word” and bright, shiny musical “Godspell.”

A GCU online learner has been nominated for an excellence in clinical research award by the hospital at which she works. Jean Cheek, forensic nurse examiner coordinator at Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, said the health system has implemented changes based on her research at GCU.

With an unprecedented 12,000 students living on the Grand Canyon University campus beginning next month, Lopes Resident Directors D.J. Heyward, Rachel Patton and Katie Ellis shared strategies to build relationships with Resident Assistant’s RA’s and RD’s, participate in floor and hall activities, and confer on a roommate agreement to build harmony.

Grand Canyon University Dance team coach Jacque Genung-Koch is the driving force behind the phenomenal success of the program, which integrates with the Cheer team, Thunder, the Havocs and the band for a highly charged atmosphere at athletic contests and campus and community events. She says there’s more anticipation than ever for this year.

Grand Canyon University summer school students reveled in the opportunity to chat, munch on refreshments and channel their inner van Gogh at Paint Night, a Canyon Activities Board-sponsored event. The results were amazing: bold, colorful canvases, from black birds against a sunset to a baby blue narwhal to a prickly pear cactus and a giant pineapple.

DNA necklaces and DNA code bead bracelets just might be the unlikeliest type of jewelry. But they were a couple of the academic jewels made by seventh- and eighth- graders Monday at the Thunder Vision Biovision STEM Day Camp. It’s just one of four such camps — the others are Cybervision, Robovision and Technovision — unfurling this week on the GCU campus, courtesy of Strategic Educational Alliances. The camps serve SEA’s mission to support kindergarten- through 12th-grade students and educators while fostering a college culture.