Luke Amargo

The Honors College, which started as a student community of 59 in 2013, has grown to become GCU’s ninth college and this fall welcomed more than 1,000 freshmen, bringing its total to more than 2,250 with no signs of slowing down. “As the culture shifts year after year, as we get these new waves of exceptional leaders coming in, each year can look like a completely different story,” Associate Dean Breanna Naegeli said.

Through four different trips this summer, 79 Honors College students benefited from some eye-opening experiences in 13 different countries in Europe, Central America and Southeast Asia. “You can see that these students start to think on a global perspective,” Program Manager Dennis Williams said. “They start to think about the world as a whole and start to think about ways that, whatever it is that they do, how they can have an impact in their local community in whatever way, in our nation but even globally.”

Learning and Living Communities are designed for GCU freshmen who prefer to share a residence hall room, suite or floor with students of similar academic interests. Along with the connections they make organically, there are organized activities in Juniper Hall, the building housing six LLC’s: Honors, Colangelo College of Business (CCOB), College of Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET), psychology from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), and nursing and athletic training through the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions (CONHCP). “It has a different feel,” Kayla Warren said of her freshman year in Juniper. “It is academically centered, where we were all in the same mindset.”

A trio of Grand Canyon University students are accelerating their dream of eliminating the middle man for impoverished Peruvian coffee farmers. They will take their ideas to the Clinton Global Initiative University, a conference this weekend at the University of Chicago. “I think it is awesome to be able to see future world leaders, entrepreneurs and changers in one central location,’’ said Noah Wolfe, who has combined with Tim McGill and Aly Halbakken to form a nonprofit, Novella.