Grand Canyon University

How does GCU make a private Christian education accessable and affordable for it’s students? That is the question that was answered at this year’s Cracking the Code CCSC Leadership Forum for Leaders within the K-12 Christian education level. “It was a great event. It was a remarkable group of leaders,” said Ryan Bredow, Assistant Vice President of K12 Educational Development. “We invited them to a conversation. The conversation was built around a concept that we refer to as cracking the code.”

There’s nothing quite like sharing your passion with others, and that’s exactly what Doctoral Learner Eugene Frimpong did as he returned to his alma mater in Ghana West Africa to give a seminar. He hoped to preach and excite his audience with the topic of data analytics.

Students continue to face suicide and bullying every day around the country. Through the Speak Up, Stand Up, Save a Life Conference on Tuesday at GCU Arena, Dr. Lily Matos DeBlieux and Gina Godbehere hope to create awareness of these social issues and how to prevent them.

Christmas is the season of giving, not getting, and give is exactly what GCU’s Army ROTC cadets did earlier this month by serving breakfast to the homeless and helping create Christmas cards for military personnel overseas for the holidays. “Me, as the leader of all these cadets, I really got to see the service side of my cadets, and I was really proud of them, their humility and everything,” said Cadet Sam Innanen, task force commander.

Parents can shame a child to make them stop bad behavior. It might work in the short term but can have long-term negative consequences. As behavioral health professionals, the challenge is telling clients how to stop shaming, and that’s what Ryan Sheade and Erica Tatum-Sheade explored with clinicians at GCU’s Third Annual Behavioral Health Conference Friday.

Kirk Cameron’s Fall Commencement keynote address underlines the importance of perseverance. The former “Growing Pains” star and now prominent Christian actor addressed GCU’s most recent group of graduates with congratulations and a powerful message of overcoming fear, fulfilling their mission and finishing the race. “This was really exciting,” Cameron said. “I was a little nervous, I’ve never done it before … I knew with all these Christian families, it was just really a special blessing to be part of this day that they’ll remember for their whole life.”

A record-setting crowd of 7,050 at Family Weekend was treated to music, food, games, worship, beautiful Phoenix weather and even a flash mob. But, really, the treat was seeing their loved ones again. Never could you see more love than when daughter lured mother on the karaoke stage. “I told her she didn’t have a choice,” Ambrosia Morris said. The weekend was full of surprises, including what these families sang together.

ASGCU President Sam Yonan and his student government team have been busy already this year, working to improve campus shuttle routes and organizing events to encourage recycling and raise awareness about harassment. “We want to keep an open ear to students on anything they need to be changed,” Yonan said. “We do represent students.”

Throwing offenders in prison or unruly children out of school is one way to handle conflict. But GCU education and justice students are being trained in another method: restorative justice. It’s a pilot program that matches GCU students with west Phoenix schoolchildren who are in a conflict to talk out a solution instead of authorities handing out punishment. “There is a growing recognition that the punishment system isn’t working as well as they would like,” said Kevin Walling, Chair of Justice Studies, Government and History at GCU.

There were a lot of loud voices simulating gunfire. BAM. BAM. There were simulations of mass shootings at schools. It was grim. But when speaker Jesus Villahermosa had finished his seminar for area educators at GCU on Thursday, there was hope and inspiration, too, on how to help schoolchildren survive the scourge of our times — the mass shooting. Villahermosa asked an important question: “Have you given them permission to fight for their lives?”