Fourth of a series previewing Canyon Worship 2018, which will be available for $9.99 on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Shazam and in the Lopes Shop on campus beginning Monday, Sept. 10.

By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau

Like so many teenagers, Logan Myers didn’t know what career path she wanted to take. And it wasn’t just because she was only a sophomore at Scottsdale Christian Academy.

“I was in a place in my life where I was really confused about who I was, where I was going to go, who I was going to be,” she said.

She liked to write songs, sure, but her focus was on becoming a schoolteacher. She did her best to talk herself into the idea. She even signed up to major in education when she was accepted into Grand Canyon University.

And then on the first day of instruction, as she sat in a mathematics class, she realized that her heart just wasn’t in it. Instead, her heart was one floor above her in the GCU Recording Studio, where Center for Worship Arts students congregate daily to build songs and relationships.

She changed majors the next day.

“It’s scary changing your life plans,” she said. “Pursuing music was really scary, but I know that God has my back and it’s OK.”

Back in those uncertain days as a high school sophomore, she wrote a song that expresses those very sentiments. It’s called “My Only Truth.”

And look what has happened. Not only was it chosen for Canyon Worship 2018; co-producer Billy Smiley invited her to spend a week in Nashville, Tenn., working on other songs she has written, and she’s scheduled to go back in December and do a full band production of that work. 

Her new career choice? Singing and songwriting, of course.

“None of that would have happened if I hadn’t written this song,” she said.

It’s one of those stories that seem to emerge almost routinely from the Worship Arts program. Like other student artists whose songs made the album, Myers, Chris Calderon and Johnny Harris don’t take this for granted. They’re amazed by how they got here and what they’ve experienced. Getting to be part of the album is just a bonus.

As they can scan the path, in both what’s ahead and in their footsteps behind them, they see God’s hand. The confusion is gone.

And there is a plan that we don’t know

But isn’t that what’s beautiful

That we don’t know anything at all

But we can know the One who does

And He knows what is to come

So we don’t have to worry anymore

And this is my only truth

Logan Myers

Even as Myers conceived those words, she was troubled by what was ahead.

“I wrote it thinking I wanted to believe what I wrote,” Myers said. “This song sort of followed me.”

So she submitted it for Canyon Worship 2018 consideration.

“Why not? It’s OK to not know what’s going to happen in your life,” she thought.

Myers is focused more on writing pop songs than Christian music. She’d like to pattern herself after Tori Kelly. “She writes pop songs that have hope-centered themes,” Myers said. “I want to be real and honest and spread love to people.”

She still isn’t satisfied with “My Only Truth.” She was surprised when it was chosen – “I didn’t think it was my best work” – but then an unexpected life experience changed her mind.

“I sang that song at church two weeks ago, and this lady came up to me and she said, ‘I just finished my last round of chemo, and those words were exactly what I needed to hear,’” Myers said. “She was crying. I was crying. It was such a special thing.

“When I wrote this song and submitted it I was like, ‘Oh, I should change the lyrics. I don’t love them.’ But I just decided, whatever, I’ll send it in, and I’m really glad because they helped someone, they touched someone.”

Calderon utilized Myers’ songwriting skill to create “Hear Me.”

“I had a melody for the bridge but didn’t have lyrics and then met Logan – she’s a great songwriter, and pretty much immediately we came up with the bridge section of the song,” he said.

Chris Calderon

But the collaboration extended to his musically talented family. His father, Christian, used to play the saxophone and came up some of the words. Chris crafted some lyrics for his mother, Phyllis, a classically trained violinist who also teaches piano.

“It doesn’t sound like something that would be on a worship album,” he said. “It’s completely different from anything you would hear. It shows that ‘different’ works, even in this context.

“We used nylon string instead of a steel-string guitar. It has a gospel flair to it. It has organ. It’s like a jam, basically. We didn’t record it piece by piece. We all sat in the room together and recorded it live, so there’s that element of keying off each other. It’s cool to have something that’s more musically inspired rather than vertical worship.”

The sophomore happened upon GCU’s Worship Arts program quite by accident. “I had no clue what Worship Arts was. I didn’t know it was a major,” he said.

His church in Chicago doesn’t have a worship ministry. Now, he feels inspired to go back there and start one.

“It’s easy for me to just want to go to a church that has an established ministry, but I definitely hear God calling me to go to that church that I came from, go to the place that needs me,” he said. “God’s given me the heart to do something that I originally didn’t want to do.”

“Still Love Me” is another song that qualifies as stylistically different. It doesn’t fit the “corporate worship” mold but adds to the variety of the album.

“It’s about the idea of surrender and how for me I’ve gone through many seasons of life where I’ve strived to earn God’s love and grace, which makes no sense, of course,” Harris said. “God’s love is God’s love and it’s here for me no matter what.”

Johnny Harris

It’s his first time on Canyon Worship, and maybe the reason it was chosen was because he started writing it three hours before the midnight deadline. “I work better when I have a deadline and am under pressure. It’s just how I’m wired,” he said.

Like Myers, Harris is from Scottsdale (Horizon High School).

Like Myers, he changed majors after arriving at GCU (he started out in Christian Studies).

And like Myers, he went through a time when he felt a calling toward music but wasn’t sure if that was the right choice.

“I was at a winter camp and was praying, ‘What do I do with my life?’” he said. “I felt that deep conviction from God, ‘You’ve written music all your life and you’re talented at it, so I think it’s pretty obvious what you should do.’”

He made the leap to the Worship Arts program even though he never sang in front of anyone until his senior year in high school. Now he takes weekly voice lessons – another feature of the program – but has found that his passion lies in the words.

 “I like writing, not just music. It’s fun to combine those,” he said. “I try to be as creative and honest and vulnerable as possible.”

And, like the others, he lets God take care of the rest.

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or rick.vacek@gcu.edu.

The post The path leads to Canyon Worship … and a career appeared first on GCU Today.

Marette Hahn, student success specialist for the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, speaks with members of the Canyon Activities Board over the summer about the results of their Indigo Assessment.

By Lana Sweeten-Shults
GCU News Bureau

Marette Hahn never will forget the day a freshly minted Grand Canyon University graduate dropped into her office, the big, bright, wide world rolling out the red carpet for him, spilling out all of its possibilities.

It was the summer after he graduated, his premed degree in biology still fresh in his hand. He was going to be a doctor.

His parents wanted him to be a doctor.

“But he had no desire to go into medical school,” Hahn said.

The student admitted to her, after four long years of climbing up that wall of chemistry and physics and calculus, “I hate it. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Then came THE question: “Now what do I do?”

It wasn’t a fun conversation to have, Hahn said.

Members of the Canyon Activities Board took the Indigo Assessment, a comprehensive personality and career assessment, over the summer. Several Student Engagement groups and full-time employee groups at GCU have taken the survey to help with team-building.

These days, when the College of Science, Engineering and Technology student success specialist speaks to students, she often tells that story.

“I don’t want to have that conversation with you,” she tells them, at least not after they graduate: “I want to have that conversation with you while you’re a freshman or sophomore, while we still have time to figure it out.”

Stories like that are part of the reason why CSET takes a unique approach in serving its students and helping them find “their God-given purpose,” as CSET Dean Dr. Mark Wooden calls it.

Personality survey on steroids

It was in 2015, when GCU built its engineering programs, that the college started using the Indigo Project’s Indigo Assessment, a comprehensive career and personality assessment the department gives to its freshman engineering students.

This year’s cohort has until Sunday to take the survey before Hahn starts making her rounds in the engineering classrooms on Monday to “debrief” students on the results.

CSET Dean Dr. Mark Wooden said the assessment helps incoming engineering students determine early on whether their choice of an engineering major is truly in line with their internal motivators.

CSET is the only college on campus to incorporate an assessment like this into the curriculum, though Career Services does offer Career Compass to all GCU students who are trying to find a career path.

Just call it a personality and career survey on steroids.

“We were looking for something that would help incoming students determine early on whether their choice of an engineering major was truly in line with their internal motivators and capitalized on their unique strengths,” Wooden said.

Even if the student hasn’t asked, “Do I have the personal disposition and skills for the field I’ve chosen?” Or, “Will I be entering a career truly meant for me?” Wooden said, no problem. The department is asking – and answering – those questions through the survey.

More than academics

When helping craft the engineering program, Dr. Michael Sheller, Associate Dean of Engineering at the time, wanted the program to be more than merely academics.

“He wanted these engineers to graduate as well-rounded professionals ready to enter the workforce, and not a lot of college students have those professional skills,” said Hahn, who worked in Career Services before moving to CSET. “They don’t have enough experience, so he was really interested in trying to build, essentially, the career-development pieces into the curriculum. So rather than them having to go out and seek out that kind of assistance and guidance, it was just built in there for them.”

Such assessments have been used in corporate America for development training for decades. But in recent years, organizations such as the Indigo Project have found value in assessing college and high school students, too, and making them self-aware.

Not that the assessment’s value is just in suggesting career choices. It also gives insights into what motivates people, what value they have on a team and even how to improve their study skills.

The assessment incorporates the DISC model, which outlines four behavioral styles — dominant, influencing, steady and compliant.

The survey, which analyzes a person’s behavioral style, motivators, social emotional perceptions and 21st-century skills, takes about 45 minutes to complete. It asks students to rank, for example, what’s most important to them out of a list of 20 or so possibilities. Would it be a new car that’s ranked at No. 1? Or helping others? The survey wants to know if you value beautiful surroundings or if you like learning just for learning’s sake.

After completing the assessment, students receive a more than 20-page report detailing their top five skills, motivators, their strengths and their value to a team.

“It’s scary how accurate it is,” Hahn said of her own Indigo report.

A major part of the assessment is the DISC Model, which divides people into their behavioral styles: dominant, influencing, steady or compliant.

High dominants are big-picture risk-takers and go-getters, while low D’s are the more team-oriented peacekeepers.

Influencers are the enthusiastic ones who need to be in an environment where they’re working with people. “High I’s are going to be the people who talk to people on the plane sitting next to them,” Hahn said.

Those who score high in steadiness are loyal, calm, reliable and consistent — the ones who drive the same way to work every single day – while low S-scale people need constant change.

Those who are high on the C-scale, or compliance scale, want to know exactly what is expected of them. However, low C’s are “going to find a workaround; they’re still going to try to get that end result, but they’re going to get it in a different way,” Hahn said.

Building teams

Mechanical engineering technology professor Dina Higgins has used results from the Indigo Assessment to build student teams, particularly lab groups.

Mechanical engineering technology professor Dina Higgins

“That’s the biggest thing we do with it,” she said of herself and fellow engineering professors. “I put a group together based on Indigo results. … It’s interesting, because you can form groups in different ways.”

She said she has put teams together made up of members who all were congenial types that got along well. But that combination hasn’t always yielded the best results.

“The group didn’t have the person that says, ‘Hey, we’ve got a deadline. We’ve got to go!’”

Faculty have access to a dashboard and can pull up students’ profiles, see their classes, get a sense for their behavioral styles and put together effective teams based just on communication style, for example.

As for how the assessment helps students, Higgins said that those who might have doubted their choice in their career path will see their attributes highlighted in writing: “I think it’s a real good morale-builder. They realize they do have those tools to be successful. It’s like their swagger comes back,” she said.

Higgins has taken the survey herself. It helped her realize why she wasn’t the best fit for a business-development job she once had. She was good at the educational portion of that job but said she never wanted to close the sale. Looking at her Indigo results, she was reminded how money isn’t a motivator for her.

“Of course!” she said of that revelation. “Even as old as you might be, you still can learn things.”

She loves the “time-wasters” portion of the assessment, too, which details for the user what might hinder someone from maximizing their time.

Higgins said the DISC Model has been used in the corporate world for years. Having taken this sort of assessment in college gives students an advantage. They might, for example, realize their boss is a certain behavioral type and will know when to back off.

That kind of knowledge, Higgins said, “is empowering for a student.”

Team dynamics

While CSET is the only college to incorporate the Indigo Assessment into its curriculum, it isn’t the only department on campus using the survey. After hearing about the test, other groups on campus have been interested in taking the assessment, too.

CSET has collaborated with Student Engagement to help facilitate that.

The Associated Students of GCU, for one, “fell in love with it,” Hahn said. She has completed Indigo Assessment training with not just ASGCU but with the Canyon Activities Board, Freshmen Class Council and full-time staff, too.

“I just love doing those presentations so much because there’s so much clicking that happens. People will say, ‘Oh, that makes so much sense,’” she said. “It’s a little bit of personal awareness and development, but also some team dynamics as well.”

The Indigo Assessment is incorporated into the freshman engineering curriculum.

Rizella Espiritu, ASGCU club advocate and a sophomore nursing student, took the assessment with fellow ASGCU members during leadership training at the end of summer. The students shared their results with each other and attended roundtable discussions.

“A big part of it was to learn from each other and learn how we work differently,” Espiritu said.

Fellow ASGCU club advocate Madison Wade, sophomore environmental science student, said the test helped the team “get the best work out of each other.”

ASGCU’s Lexi King, a sophomore studying psychology, said the value in the assessment for her was it “helped us to know how to interact with each other.”

While the group used the survey mainly for team-building, King said it also guided them toward careers that meld with their personalities: “It helped you to know what environment you work best in,” she said.

Not that the assessment’s career guidance is an absolute be all, end all. Hahn said that whatever the Indigo report says, students ultimately have the power to decide what they’ll be doing after they leave the GCU campus, and they have their career and personality assessment as a tool to help them make those decisions.

“It’s not that you can’t do it. It’s that you’re really going to have to push yourself to do it if it doesn’t come naturally to you,” she said.

While engineers are high in steadiness and compliance, Higgins said she doesn’t fit the mold. She scores extremely high as an influencer and is an enthusiastic people person. 

“Engineering is not on my Indigo Assessment list for jobs,” she said, making this point to her freshman engineering students: “When you get this (Indigo Assessment) over the weekend, if the word engineering isn’t on there, don’t freak out. … We’ve got three engineers (on the faculty) who are high I’s. That’s not an engineering personality.”

So many different things go into engineering, she pointed out. For her, when it comes to an “engineering personality,” really, “There isn’t one.”

What there is is the knowledge that the world still will be rolling out that red carpet and spilling out all of its possibilities.

Contact GCU senior writer Lana Sweeten-Shults at lana.sweeten-shults@gcu.edu or at 602-639-7901

The post Assessment helps CSET engineer stronger students appeared first on GCU Today.

A lot of hard work goes on in the Recording Studio, but students enjoy the collaboration.

Last of a series previewing Canyon Worship 2018, which will be available for $9.99 on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Shazam and in the Lope Shop on campus beginning Monday, Sept. 10.

By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau

You would think it’s intensely competitive.

You would think the students in the Center for Worship Arts at Grand Canyon University constantly are trying to one-up each other when it’s time to decide whose song will be chosen for a Canyon Worship album.

The studio has become a home away from home for many Worship Arts students.

You would think they aren’t overly eager to help each other with lyrics or music, that they tend to reserve their best work for themselves.

You would be wrong.

“When someone is truly in service to God, the world’s metric of success seems to fade away into the noisy background,” said Eric Johnson, who manages the GCU Recording Studio and sees the vibe in action all the time when students gather there. 

“These students tend to focus on who God has created them to be, and they simply want to pursue that purpose. Helping others to be who God created them to be is a natural extension of a worship artist’s purpose and the reason why one would find joy in another’s success.”

Interviews with the student artists on Canyon Worship 2018, scheduled to be released Monday, produced the same sentiment over and over. What keeps coming up is how much they care for each other – and especially for newcomers.

Katie Brown and Logan Myers both talked about what it was like for them when they first came to the Recording Studio. They appreciate how they were made to feel comfortable and included.  

“I really didn’t know very many people and I’m very shy. I was afraid of not making friends,” Brown said. “But the way the classes are formatted and (with the culture) the community creates in the studio, there are a lot of shared interests.

“I have grown so much just by being a part of this community and being able to quickly gain friends and feel like we have a lot in common, that we want to be around each other.”

Logan Myers (second from left) and Chris Calderon (with guitar) both found the Recording Studio culture welcoming.

Myers overcame her reticence by just coming to the lounge to eat or do homework and spending all of her free time there. She grew comfortable with the scene: Someone playing guitar and groups of students collaborating and singing.

“Everyone’s so kind and nice and friendly, and they want to be your friend,” she said. “They invited me places. It’s hard to make friends where you don’t really know anyone, and I didn’t know anyone in this program. It was scary, but they’re really inviting.”

Chris Calderon got to GCU a year ago, coming all the way from Chicago. Now he’s so comfortable up in the studio, located on the fourth floor of the Technology building, he feels like an old-timer.

“I always like to tell people, it’s like the first-century church,” he said. “We have this area we can come to and gather, but what we have out there in the lounge, it travels wherever we go. Having this area helped us cultivate that culture like the first-century church where we’re eating together, praying together, doing Scripture, growing in our relationship with God.

“It’s an amazing community. You can tell that God is the center of everyone’s focus within our friendships.”

It wouldn’t work if some of the students had big egos. It wouldn’t work if they thought it was all about them.

Mallory Denson said the Worship Arts program changed her life. She just was named the Worship Director at Paradise Church in Phoenix.

“There are extremely talented people here that don’t parade it around,” Courtney Welker said. “They’re very humble with their talents. It’s a place where it’s easy to grow because you’re challenged by these humble peers that are really gifted and you realize you could be like them – you could be better by honing your craft – but there’s never pressure to be like them in particular.

“The goal is to edify Christ with what you have. They don’t do that by requiring certain hours of practice a week or something that could rob the joy of our craft. They encourage it just by celebrating what people are able to do when they hone their craft.”

Or just hone their life. Mallory Denson had been through some challenges in Mississippi, where she grew up, before arriving at GCU.

“Oh man. It changed my life,” said Denson, who graduated in April and this week was named Worship Director at Paradise Church in Phoenix. “The Worship Arts program in general completely – just having professors who were so intentional and so helpful to your spiritual life, not just academically.

“GCU completely made me secure in my calling, made that affirmation happen in my calling, especially when I got onto the Worship Team as a worship leader. That grew me so much. I knew what my calling is, but it grew to where I was completely sure what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

“I made my best friends here, and I still have so much family here. Even though we’re from all different places, it’s like you have those friends for life. GCU really impacted my life in ways that I never would have imagined. I got to know who God was in such a different way, and I got to experience Him in ways that I never thought I could have.”

But here’s the thing: It’s not as if collaboration is required or pushed on anyone. It just happens. And if students want to work alone on a song, they can do that, too.

Co-producers Geoff Hunker (center) and Billy Smiley (right) love working with the Worship Arts students — and love the atmosphere in the Recording Studio, too.

“I think it’s a really healthy mix of both,” Aaron Bolton said. “I think I come up with some of my most personal ideas by myself, but at the same time I think it’s really helpful, especially as you’re starting out songwriting, to just get with somebody else who can complete your idea.

“It goes even deeper to the fact that we should be building each other up and wanting to support each other. You’ve got all these songwriters (in the industry) running around who are like, ‘No, I just want to do my own thing. I just want to write all my own stuff. I’m better than anyone else.’ But we need people, not even just for songwriting. We need other people to make it through life – Jesus was clear about that.”

The co-producers of Canyon Worship 2018, Geoff Hunker and Billy Smiley, feel the vibe, too. It’s not hard to pick up on it. It makes their job easier.

“It’s a place where a lot of different people can put their arts together, and then there’s the collaboration of not just the students but the people who are working on design, the video and all the elements of these different outlets for creativity that go into this,” Hunker said. “I think it’s amazing. I feel humble to be part of it.”

Smiley said, “They’re all talented in their own way. That’s what’s so fun, is just bringing it back to the influences of where they come from, what their influences are and molding it. They’re just like sponges. Some of them just really want to learn and grow. It’s a chance to feed into them, especially vocally.”

But they’re trying hard not to be jealous. That, after all, would be wrong. And the Recording Studio is just not a place for a bad vibe.

“If I was a student, I would love this,” Hunker said. “The facility is so great, I would be in here nonstop.”

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or rick.vacek@gcu.edu.

The post They’re all in this together on Canyon Worship appeared first on GCU Today.

Mark Moore of Christ’s Church of the Valley speaks at Chapel on Monday morning.

Story by Rick Vacek
Photos by Gillian Rea
GCU News Bureau

Talk about dynamic debuts. Harrison Russell’s introduction of “Rhythm” and Mark Moore’s first appearance as a Chapel speaker made for a powerful combination Monday morning in Chapel at Grand Canyon University Arena.   

Russell led the Worship Team’s stirring musical performance and then, as a finale, evoked the longest and loudest Chapel ovation in memory from the crowd of 6,000 with “Rhythm,” the leadoff song on Canyon Worship 2018.

Harrison Russell performed his song”Rhythm” at the end of the Worship Team’s performance.

The album, written and performed by Center for Worship Arts students, was released Monday – it’s on iTunes, Google Play and Spotify and as a CD in the Lope Shop on campus.  The “Rhythm” lyrics are sure to keep spinning through the head of anyone who hears them:

You’ve got me moving to a different beat,

I’m singing this melody,

I’m lost in the rhythm of Your love.

Moore’s talk was just as impactful. The Teaching Pastor of Christ’s Church of the Valley was eloquent and direct as he told the story of Rustam, a pastor and surgeon (quite a combination, as Moore noted) from Tajikistan, on the northeast border of Afghanistan.

The pair met a month ago in Belarus, where Moore was doing a graduate class for Russian-speaking pastors on how to interpret the Bible. The only way to explain what happened to Rustam (pronounced “rrrrroos-TAHM”) is that God works in mysterious ways.

After all, it’s not every day that you hear of someone who had dreams of becoming a surgeon but was very poor … so he and his accomplices beat people and robbed them … and then they met with a Korean taekwondo master in the hope of getting even more lethal at it … but the instructor was secretly a missionary … and when Rustam, who was a Muslim, rejected the missionary’s declarations about Jesus, Christ Himself appeared to Rustam and said “I am Jesus, and I am your God” … so he converted to Christianity and went to a Moscow seminary.

An amazing story, sure, but Moore’s greater point revolved around what he calls “proleptic cruciformity” – “living the cross of Christ.”

“When we talk about the cross, at least in church world, we almost always think about Jesus – this is Jesus’ cross, and Jesus died on the cross for me, and that’s true. But that is never enough,” Moore said. “You want to be a disciple of Jesus, you’ve got to start talking about your cross, not His cross.”

He added, “The whole message, I can put in a single sentence: Jesus’ cross is salvation for your soul; your cross is salvation for society.”

Moore likened “proleptic” to “pointing to the future,” such as when teenage girls write the names of their future children in their three-ring binder or young boys make believe they’re taking the shot that will win the basketball game.

And, in his mind, the best way Christians can make the future better is by being more demonstrative about their beliefs. Only 13 percent of Valley residents attend church, Moore said, which means “they’re not going to hear about Christ from me; they need to hear about Christ from you.”

“I live here in this Valley. I will die here in this Valley,” he said. “This is my home, and I look around to 5 million people heading to a Christ-less eternity. And the likelihood of them just walking into the church because they want to hear about the cross of Jesus is pretty slim.”

It all goes back to the Bible verse Moore cited, Matthew 16:24-25:

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it.’”

Moore also pointed to “How the West Won,” a book by secular sociologist Rodney Starr that details how Western civilization changed the world with its emphasis on freedom and knowledge. In America, Moore declared, education and hospitals – to name two major institutions – would not be where they are today without the church, and he lauded GCU’s efforts in its neighborhood.

“If you have heard the media lately, the way they talk about the church is that we are an archaic relic,” Moore said. “I don’t mean to be offensive with this, but anyone who believes the church is an archaic relic is historically ignorant. They haven’t a clue of what has happened in our society, in our world, because of the church. …”

“You remove the church, God won’t have to send us to hell – we will be there.”

There was more to Rustam’s story. He fulfilled that goal of becoming a doctor and found himself stitching up Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. But the Taliban still wanted to kill him because he was healing people in the name of Jesus, and it took two more only-God-could-do-this miracles to save his life when the Taliban tried to kill him. God told him, in another vision, that there were many other attempts as well.

Moore ended his talk with this challenge to his audience:

“When you take up a cross, you think you’re dying; that’s actually when you begin to live. People aren’t looking for something worth living for, they’re looking for something worth dying for, and when we show them what is worth dying for, they will realize how to begin living.

“There is a world right around you that is in desperate need of Christians who will take up their cross and will use their very occupations to transform society. And if you’re not willing to do that, you forfeit the right to call yourself a Christian.”

● For a replay of Monday’s Chapel, including the music performed by the Worship Team, click here.

● Next week’s speaker will be Joni Eareckson Tada, who has been a quadriplegic since she was paralyzed in an accident 50 years ago and operates a ministry that reaches out to the disabled. Chapel is at 11:15 a.m. Mondays in GCU Arena.

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or rick.vacek@gcu.edu.

****

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GCU Today: Worship Team strikes a chord at Chapel

The post Russell, Moore make Chapel doubly powerful appeared first on GCU Today.

Conner Teich, secretary of Young Americans for Freedom (left), and other members of the GCU club place American flags on the Student Life lawn Tuesday morning to remember the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

GCU News Bureau

Some Grand Canyon University freshmen weren’t even born when the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, forever changed the country.

It’s part of the reason why at least two groups on campus are making sure that important date is not forgotten.

GCU’s Army ROTC has made it a tradition to memorialize the event by planting American flags and did so again this year on the Quad, where the lawn is dotted with about 3,000 flags spelling out “USA.”

Almost 3,000 people were killed that Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001.

GCU’s Young Americans for Freedom club wanted to honor those who died on that day with its own memorial, similarly placing about 3,000 flags on the lawn between the Student Life Building and Media Arts Center.

Flags spelling “USA” were planted on the Quad on Monday afternoon.

The “9/11: Never Forget Project” is part of a national initiative on college campuses across the country, in collaboration with Young America’s Foundation.

“We just want to make sure that people still remember 9/11,” Young Americans for Freedom club secretary Conner Teich said.

The Honors College senior, a double major in business information systems and business management, was 4 years old when the attack occurred.

“We want to commemorate all those people, (including) first responders,” he said. “It’s just so people don’t forget about that tragic day. It took such a big toll on America itself; we just don’t want people to forget that.”

Since 2003, more than 10.4 million American flags have been placed in the ground as part of the project, according to Young America’s Foundation.

Americans marked the 9/11 anniversary with numerous events, including thousands of 9/11 victims’ relatives, survivors, rescuers and more uniting at the memorial plaza where the World Trade Center twin towers once stood.

Other high-profile memorials were the presidential tributes at the Pentagon and at the Shanksville, Pa., field where Flight 93 crashed. The new Flight 93 National Memorial at Shanksville was dedicated Sunday and includes a 93-foot-tall Tower of Voices that will include 40 wind chimes to represent each passenger and crew member who died.

In Phoenix, the day was memorialized at City Hall, where officials spoke and Phoenix Police and Fire honor guards performed.

The post GCU remembers Sept. 11 terrorist attacks appeared first on GCU Today.

(Sept. 10, 2018) – The Grand Canyon University Worship Arts program has released its third album – Canyon Worship 2018 – with 10 original songs written and performed by GCU students.

The album is available for $9.99 on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Shazam as well as the Lope Shop and other locations on GCU’s campus.

“Last year’s album was so good that, coming into this project, I actually was a little bit concerned that we may not be able to bring it up to that level,” said Eric Johnson, manager of the GCU Recording Studio and the album’s main coordinator. “But I think we hit the mark and maybe even passed it a little bit because we’re shifting the focus to the corporate worship side. There are a lot of good songs that you wouldn’t necessarily sing as a group in church, but these are songs that you can sing in church.”

Corporate worship songs, which can be incorporated more easily into a church setting, are the direction the Christian music industry is headed.

For the second consecutive year, the Canyon Worship album was produced in GCU’s state-of-the-art recording studio by two music industry veterans, Geoff Hunker (Satellites & Sirens) and Billy Smiley (The Gaithers). Like Johnson, they’re delighted with how it turned out.

“On all of the songs, I tried to do different styles so as not to limit to one thing,” Hunker said. “The approach was to make it more congregational, worship-based. We tried to not so much find artsy songs but to find some that might have artistic goodness or greatness to them but also can connect with congregations or the chapel worship service. That was the goal, but also keeping some creative artistic influences in the songs and the writing.”

From more than 130 submissions, 10 songs were selected for Canyon Worship 2018. They are:

• “Rhythm” (Harrison Russell)
• “Goes Before” (Katie Brown)
• “You and I” (Mallory Denson)
• “Make Yourself Known” (Kristyn Marie)
• “Witness” (Aaron Bolton)
• “Come to Me” (Harrison Russell)
• “Free Me” (Courtney Welker, featuring Mallory Denson)
• “Hear Me” (Chris Calderon)
• “My Only Truth” (Logan Myers)
• “Still Love Me” (Johnny Harris)

“I love the idea of what the Canyon Worship record is,” Hunker said. “There are so many creative and talented students here. To take all these different people and allow them a place where they can release their own original music that’s produced professionally, it’s all of the avenues that any artist would want their song to be on.”

GCU’s Center for Worship Arts is distinct among performance-based programs, as it combines both ministry and performance. The curriculum includes 32 credit hours in the College of Theology, ensuring that students are grounded in Christ and prepared to become worship leaders in churches throughout the world.

For more information, visit http://pages.gcu.edu/cwa/canyonworship.php or gcu.edu/worshiparts. To download the album, visit iTunes.

# # #

About Grand Canyon University:  Grand Canyon University was founded in 1949 and is Arizona’s premier private Christian university. GCU is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and offers more than 230 academic programs, emphases and certificates for both traditional undergraduate students and working professionals. The University’s curriculum emphasizes interaction with classmates, both in-person and online, and individual attention from instructors while fusing academic rigor with Christian values to help students find their purpose and become skilled, caring professionals. For more information, visit gcu.edu.

The post GCU Worship Arts students release third album appeared first on GCU Today.

By Theresa Smith
GCU News Bureau

How do people’s convictions to respect human dignity coexist with their passions for science, biology, medicine and technological innovation?

What types of conflict arise between Christian values and advancements in these fields?

Joni Eareckson Tada is the Chapel speaker on Monday, which leads off the second annual Bioethics Conference.

The Grand Canyon University community can gain insight on pressing questions in bioethics and they can ask questions and share thoughts on contemporary ethical challenges with experts in health care, ministry and education on Monday at the 2018 Bioethics Conference at GCU Arena and the First Southern Baptist Church.

The second annual conference, titled “Human Dignity: Clash of World Views” features four speakers, beginning at 11:15 a.m. with Chapel speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of the nonprofit organization Joni and Friends.

The conference has been in the planning stages since last year’s inaugural conference. The College of Education and the College of Theology are the co-sponsors and there are members of the planning committee from the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, Student Engagement, Strategic Education Alliances and Event Services.

Dr. Marjaneh Gilpatrick, the Executive Director of Educational Outreach, is the chairperson of the committee, which also includes community members Pamela Baldwin and Melissa Pullon. Baldwin is the director of the Phoenix branch of Joni and Friends, a nonprofit organization devoted to spreading the word of Jesus Christ to people affected by disabilities. Tada, the Chapel speaker, is the founder of the organization. Pullon is a GCU parent and church director of special needs ministry.

“Bioethics is such a wide and all-encompassing topic,’’ Gilpatrick said. “This is a great opportunity for our students to learn about bioethics and the value of human life. As people of faith, how do we navigate that subject, make sense of it, reflect on it and make it applicable in our lives?’’

Thousands of GCU students will hear the message of Tada, an international advocate for people affected by disability whose 1967 diving accident left her a quadriplegic.

“I’m really excited because of the fact that Joni Earekson Tada is one of the speakers,’’ Gilpatrick said. “She has accomplished so much even though she has physical health challenges. She’s a great example of how you move on and help others. That is a great motivator for me. I love to be of service. To use planning the conference as an example, this was a great collaboration and all about team effort.’’

The target audience for the rest of the speakers is a mix of church members from the surrounding community and GCU faculty members who plan to bring their students from class, along with students who do not have classes. Following lunch, the second part of the conference will be held in the smaller venue at the church adjacent to campus.

Beginning at 1:15 p.m., Critical Mass, GCU’s a cappella ensemble, will perform, followed by welcoming remarks from GCU President Brian Mueller, and a prayer by Dr. Tim Griffin, Pastor and Dean of Students.

Guest speaker Scott Klusendorf, who trains pro-life advocates to speak in the public square, will begin his talk at approximately 1:30 p.m.

At 2 p.m., Sue and Daniel Stratman will speak. Along with Jay Stratman, they are the authors of “When Losing is Winning,’’ the story and aftermath of Daniel’s hernia surgery, which left him severely brain injured.

Suzanne Helzer follows at 2:30 p.m. She is the nurse manager at First Way Pregnancy Center in Phoenix, working daily with women in crisis pregnancies. 

A panel discussion is planned for 3 p.m., followed by evaluations, door prizes and closing. 

The event is free for the students with GCU identification (lunch not included). Tickets for non-students are $15 and include lunch.

For more information and tickets, click here.   

Contact Theresa Smith at (602) 639-7457 or theresa.smith@gcu.edu.

The post Human dignity headlines Bioethics Conference appeared first on GCU Today.

Brett Cortright presides over the GCU hospitality program’s kickoff event, which packed the Canyon 49 Grill.

Story by Rick Vacek
Photos by David Kadlubowski
GCU News Bureau

It’s one thing for an academic program to grow. A new degree is offered, students seek it out and their numbers expand. Seems simple enough.

But growing a reputation at the same time is far more challenging.

Brett Cortright, who manages the hospitality program at Grand Canyon University, couldn’t help but think how much has happened in just three years as he surveyed all the students spread out across every table of the Canyon 49 Grill for a get-acquainted event.

GCU alumna Katie Casteel, now the Catering Coordinator at Desert Mountain Club, speaks to the hospitality students.

“A lot of it is definitely the reputation that GCU has built up,” he said. “Our students are unbelievable. I put one in a property and they’re calling me the next day saying, ‘How many more do you have that you can send?’”

The event also was an opportunity for the nearly 200 students in the Colangelo College of Business (CCOB) program to hear from one of its first graduates, Katie Casteel. Her story reflects exactly what Cortright is hearing from prospective employers.

By working in an East Coast cruise ship, three restaurants (two of them GCU businesses) and another GCU-related venture, the Mission Possible Café, Casteel had put in far more than the 600 hours of industry work experience the hospitality program requires.

That made her eminently hirable after commencement in December. She was snapped up to be the first intern at the prestigious Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, which features six golf courses and six clubhouses.

“I got to do so much in my time at GCU, and that really translated very, very well when I started working at Desert Mountain,” she said. “I was able to show them what an internship was supposed to be.

“At GCU, they do such a great job of telling you, ‘We’re training you to work in hotels,’ ‘We’re training you to work in restaurants,’ ‘We have a golf course you can try working at.’ Because I was put in all those different situations so many times at GCU, once I got to Desert Mountain, I was able to adapt to my surroundings really, really well.”

Francisco Lamadrid (left) and Bryce Weinrich greet Casteel following her presentation.

The result: After just three months as an intern, she was hired full-time to be the catering coordinator.

“My dream job,” she said.

Casteel graduated in just 2½ years thanks to the 32 college credits she had earned in high school. And not only did she take advantage of the on-the-job experience she got at GCU; she also made good use of what she learned in the classroom.

Her most beneficial class, she said, was her food and beverage management class in her final semester. The skills she developed there were put to immediate use at Desert Mountain.

“I could show them, ‘Hey, I know how to calculate food costs. I know how to do a bar. I know how to take inventory of things,’” she said.

“Brett plays an incredible role in designing all these classes. He’s done a fantastic job of making sure you have the right tools in your toolbox so that when you go into an actual job, not only do you have 600 hours worth of experience, at least, but you have all these classes that have been building blocks. You don’t realize how useful they are until you are in a position and you say, ‘I know how to do that!’”

One of the interested listeners as Casteel spoke was Megan McCreary, who’s just starting out at GCU after transferring from a highly regarded university back east. She already is seeing the benefits Casteel endorses.

For one thing, she said, she made more friends in her first two weeks at GCU than she made in two years at her previous college. The fact that GCU is a Christian university was a big draw for her.

But her No. 1 consideration was the quality of the hospitality program, and GCU’s “stood out so much,” she said.

McCreary’s goal is to own a hotel someday, and she knows that won’t happen unless she understands every aspect of the industry. She wants to stay on campus next summer and work at the GCU Hotel. She also is excited about joining the newly formed Hospitality Club.

“I’m planning to start from the bottom and want to learn everything,” she said. “I’m going to learn the front of the house, the back of the house, housekeeping, food service, what goes into the general manager position. I’ll just keep working my way up.”

Yaron Ashkenazi has the kind of job to which McCreary aspires. He’s an award-winning international hotelier who, just four months ago, was named CEO of Oxygen Hospitality Group, a hotel real estate and investment management company. 

When Ashkenazi needed to start hiring, a business partner who was impressed by the GCU hospitality program suggested it would be a good place to begin. Now the company touts seven employees … and four of them are GCU graduates.

“They’re so good,” he said. “They’re very happy to work, and they come with a smile, with knowledge, with motivation to study and with curiosity.”

He got the same vibe from talking with current students at the Canyon 49 event.

“The people that I met today are really motivated, nice, brilliant, with a fire in their eyes,” he said. “They really want to work.”

It’s no wonder they do, considering the motivation pumped into them by Cortright and his faculty and staff. The hotel industry veteran began his presentation at the student gathering by reminding them, “Be the difference between someone having an average stay and an extraordinary stay.”

And the difference between what’s happening now and what it was like at the program’s inception in August 2015, when his enrollment was a dozen, is that he has far more students to educate.

“The program’s success is a direct result of the access our hospitality students have to Brett and his team and their experiences in the learning laboratory he has created in our hotel and restaurant,” said Dr. Randy Gibb, the CCOB dean.

Cortright said of the welcoming get-together, “Three years ago, we could have had this event in the corner of the restaurant. It really is unbelievable. The operation has grown to be able to pull off an event like this, and the student count has grown to the point where we have to pull off an event like this.”

It can be difficult to properly measure the growth of an academic program. But, sometimes, it’s sitting right in front of you.

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or rick.vacek@gcu.edu.

****

Related content:

GCU Today: GCU checks in with hotel, hospitality program

GCU Today: Hospitality program earns another victory

GCU Today: Hospitality students get first-hand experience

The post Hospitality program grows in reach, reputation appeared first on GCU Today.

Dr. Deb Wade

By Dr. Deb Wade
GCU Vice President, Counseling and Psychological Services

I believe it is human nature to have that one imperfection that we wish we could change – it may be eyes that are too close together, a large nose, a crooked tooth, too curly hair/too straight hair, a flabby tummy. Mostly, these are just annoyances and frustrations that we rarely give consistent or constant thought.

But there is that segment of the population that tends to obsess over these imperfections to the degree that it is a fixation that interrupts the natural flow of life. I am talking about a mental health condition known as “body dysmorphic disorder” – BDD.

Those who suffer from BDD often spend huge amounts of time and energy focusing on, analyzing and attempting to change the body feature that bothers them. Additionally, they may spend many dollars on plastic surgery in an attempt to rectify the problem yet are mostly dissatisfied with the results – only tending to reinforce the disgust with self.

Those with BDD are impacted in nearly every area of their lives.

They tend to isolate from social events in the belief that others also are disgusted with their perceived imperfection. They also tend to ruminate on ways to cover up, erase or seek validation about their imperfection (which they don’t believe anyway) — and/or they tend to either avoid mirrors altogether or spend exorbitant amounts of time in front of the mirror.

Sadly, this condition can become so severe that one who suffers from it might even consider suicide as a means to escape the pain.

The paradox of this condition is that the perceived flaw is usually fabricated or, if present, hardly noticeable to others. The one afflicted will spend inordinate amounts of time checking on the perceived flaw, will often isolate or “hide” from others because of the flaw and will plan life around the flaw, which almost always leads to social anxiety and/or isolation.

It is a debilitating condition, and it seems to control the thoughts, actions and reactions of the one who deals with it. The obsession over the perceived flaw often will lead to ritualistic behaviors (often like one who has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), and they can become so pervasive that life functioning is greatly impaired.

Where does this come from? There are many theories: Genes and the environment are probable causes. One’s risk of having and failing to cope with BDD are greatly enhanced, also, if there is a biological relative who deals with it; if there was a negative experience in childhood that greatly impacted them (such as bullying, teasing); if there is underlying poor self-esteem; or if there has been a great emphasis to be “pretty,” to “stand out” or to be “handsome.”

If you or a loved one suffers with this condition, what is the action plan? Therapy is a MUST – it helps to unlock and recognize irrational and illogical thinking patterns and, ultimately, to replace the negative self-evaluation with a positive one, based on facts.

For example, “I have come to realize that genetically, I am prone to have many moles on my skin; however, I have come to recognize them as beauty marks and can learn to be OK with them.” 

Another kind of therapy – exposure therapy – is just as the name implies. One is encouraged to go out in public with the perceived flaw exposed. When there is no negative reaction from the general public, this is to be repeated consistently so that the one suffering can begin to realize that the flaw is more in their own mind than in the eye of the public.

In addition, exposure therapy encourages one to stop seeking approval from outside and, instead, begin to be OK with self from the inside. Another goal is to stop the frequent “checking” and “covering up” – rather, to learn to live freely without having to constantly engage in those behaviors.

Freedom can come with therapy. If you are suffering from BDD, please know that this is not a life sentence. There is relief, there is release and there is rejoicing that can come with healing.

The post Dr. Deb’s Mental Health Vitamin: Body dysmorphic disorder appeared first on GCU Today.

Connie Colbert

By Connie Colbert
Director, Canyon Health and Wellness Clinic

It is estimated that by year 2020, one-half of Americans older than 50 years will be at risk for bone fractures caused by osteoporosis, a bone disease that causes the bones to become weaker and more likely to break.

It can occur in anyone but is most common in older women. But it is not restricted to adults – it also can occur in children and adolescents.

Researchers are finding that while osteoporosis was once thought to be an inevitable part of aging, it actually has its beginnings in childhood.

The factors that are shown to affect bone mass are many, and some we are able to change and others we cannot. The factors we cannot change are genetics, gender and ethnicity.

• African-Americans tend to have higher bone-mass levels than Caucasians and Asians.
• Hispanic women tend to have bone-mass levels lower than African-Americans but higher than Caucasians and Asians.
• Peak bone mass is the maximum of bone density a person can reach, usually by ages 16 to 25. It is important to build strong bones in the growing years to maintain strong bones in adulthood.

But we can play a part in keeping our bones strong and avoiding fractures.

If you are a parent of young children or adolescents, you can help your children make healthy choices by encouraging them and eating a diet that is rich in calcium and vitamin D, getting regular exercise (it works best to do this as a family) and avoid smoking.

Other factors affecting bone health may include certain medications and/or disease. Some of them include:

• Glucocorticoids (steroids)
• Immunosuppressive drugs
• Low testosterone levels
• Excessive alcohol consumption
• COPD
• Gastrointestinal diseases (especially those of the small intestines)
• Certain medications for seizures

If you are a woman age 65 or older, schedule a bone density test. If you are age 64 or younger and have gone through menopause, consult with your health care provider to determine when to get a bone-density test.

The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force also recommends that all men age 70 years or older obtain a bone-density test (also known as a DEXA scan).

Many view osteoporosis as a women’s disease, but men who have a diet lacking calcium and Vitamin D, don’t exercise enough and are heavy drinkers and smokers also might acquire this disease.

If you are concerned about the possibility of getting this disease, have further questions or would like testing, contact your health care provider.

For an overview of the dietary recommendations for Vitamin D and calcium, click here.

The post Fitness Facts: How healthy are your bones? appeared first on GCU Today.

Professor Molly Elmer teaches her math class. (Photo by David Kadlubowski)

By Theresa Smith
GCU News Bureau

Babies often arrive on their own timetable, which was the case for Baby Jeffrey in 2017. Two weeks into his mother’s master’s math class, he came into the world, which meant that his library was filled with “God Created the Integers’’ and Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos’’ along with “Maybe My Baby’’ and “Goodnight Moon.’’ While Jeffrey slept or nursed, his mother, Molly Elmer, was quick to prop open her math book for quiet reading sessions in her master’s program.

Elmer embodies the dramatic impact of five new master’s degrees in teaching content programs at Grand Canyon University – programs that were launched to meet a need created by the Higher Learning Commission’s adoption of increased standards for faculty, effective Sept. 1, 2017.  The HLC is an accreditation body for colleges and universities in a 19-state region of the United States, including Arizona.

Dr. Sherman Elliott, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, responded quickly when the HLC announced new standards in 2015, designing master’s programs for teaching specific content: English, communication, history, sociology and mathematics. With the exception of mathematics, all of them are available online, which makes them convenient for working teachers.

“These teachers don’t have time and money to go back to school at one o’clock in the middle of the day for graduate seminars,’’ said Elliott, who has taught at the high school, community college and university level.

Dr. Sherman Elliott in his office at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. (Photo by David Kadlubowski)

Owing to its hands-on nature, mathematics is taught face-to-face on campus but is offered at night in four-hour sessions to accommodate the working schedules of dual-enrollment high school teachers, community college teachers and lower division university teachers seeking to keep their jobs by meeting the new requirements of the HLC.

Teachers who already have a master’s degree must gain 18 credit hours of graduate school credit in their teaching subject. For those without a master’s degree, 34 credit hours are required in the direct field they plan to teach — for example, “mathematics,’’ not “mathematics education.”

Currently, there are 114 students in the English program, 110 in communications, 89 in history, 67 in sociology and 35 in mathematics.

“It is one of our fastest-growing programs,’’ Elliott said. “I have been so grateful because it tells me we did rush to the market but we met a need. It is a big help because it allows people to keep their jobs. And I am not just talking about Arizona; they can be in New Mexico, Colorado, anyone dealing with HLC accreditation.’’

In an example of cross-college collaboration, two of the required classes are taught in the College of Education — EDU 534: Effective Pedagogy for Higher Education and EDU 548: Curricular and Instructional Methods in Higher Education. For Elmer, the only other non-math class was the first of the program, a two-credit course, UNV (meaning University) 503: Introduction to Graduate Studies in the Liberal Arts.

Balancing family and a teaching career

The multitasking Elmer is unique among the first graduates of the program, given her distinction as the first to be hired as a full-time lecturer by GCU. She teaches two sections of college mathematics, two sections of applications of college algebra and one Calculus I class.

Before the program launched, Elmer already was taking graduate school math classes at GCU. With the encouragement of faculty members, she continued on to meet HLC requirements. A few days after completing her degree, formally known as a Master of Science in Mathematics with an Emphasis in Education, she applied for a full-time faculty position at GCU.

“So many of us were so grateful when they put it into a program to gain an official degree,’’ she said.

It was a circuitous path for the cheerful and patient instructor, considering her bachelor’s degree and her first master’s degree were in anthropology. A Missouri native, she attended the University of Arizona for her undergraduate degree and Stony Brook in New York for her first master’s degree.

Molly Elmer with her son, Jeffrey, and her husband, Tyler.

“My mom was a college math professor, so it was always something I was pretty good at it through high school and college, but I never considered it as something I wanted to do,’’ she said. “I love anthropology but there are not a lot of job opportunities teaching it, so when I finished grad school the jobs that were open led me into the math field, and I realized I did love it. My passion for it grew by working in the field.”

In 2012, Elmer came to the GCU campus as a part-time instructional assistant in mathematics. While working full-time as an IA in 2015, she gave birth to Jeffrey and stayed home from teaching for several months, but she also worked on the master’s in math.

“My husband was a big help,’’ Elmer said of Tyler. “The great part about those classes being in the evening was that when my husband came home from work, he could watch our son and I could go to campus. I have had the traditional master’s program previously, and it is full time. By taking a part-time class load, I could balance my son and the program. While my son was taking naps, I did homework or I did homework at night after he went to bed. It was a balancing act, but the way the program was structured made it doable as a working adult.’’

Each class was taught on campus on a weeknight for four hours. In between, she studied on her own and met with her cohort, which was comprised of high school teachers looking to maintain or obtain the requirements to teach dual enrollment or adjunct college professors meeting the new requirements to keep their jobs.

“The great part for me about being in in-person cohort classes is that you are moving through them with the same group of people, so you form study groups,’’ Elmer said. “We met nearly every Saturday for two to three hours just to help each other and teach each other. It was a real gift, especially if you are stuck (on a problem). Talking it through with someone makes all the difference.’’

Elmer applies the same principles with her students now by conducting her office hours in the Math Center, located in Room 202 of the CHSS building.

“At the Math Center there is no pressure,’’ she said. “They can work with their headphones on and then ask a question when they have a question. They can do it on their own pace and not a one-on-one where they might feel uncomfortable. Since it is always staffed with math faculty, there is always someone there that can help them.’’

In an ironic sense, CHSS developed the program to help Elmer. In turn, she is helping scores of GCU students learn college math.

“We are affirming the person. It is a win-win,’’ Elliott said.

English masters emphasizes writing

While Elmer is explaining concepts and evaluating her student’s practice problem progress, Dr. Thomas Skeen is down the hall in his office preparing to teach a grant writing class.

Skeen, a GCU instructor for eight years, guides students through the process: finding a grant, matching needs, writing to the initial contact, crafting a proposal and preparing a budget.

Dr. Thomas Skeen teaches an assortment of English classes in the master’s program.

Skeen also teaches writing theory (applied rhetoric/persuasion and communication), multimedia writing (creating a social media campaign), organizational communications, and writing in social and technological contexts. All the classes require the teacher-students to prepare lesson plans.

“We study how to get the content students learn to transfer from one context to another,’’ Skeen said. “The program is designed to model the things they can do in the classroom. They take a lot of writing classes. It is important to learn how to teach a lot of different kinds of writing.”

Caitlin Velasco earned her bachelor’s degree from the College of Education and teaches eighth-grade language arts at a middle school in Tucson. In April, she enrolled in the master’s program and has flourished in two classes with Skeen: writing theory and social and technological contexts of writing.

“Dr. Skeen is amazing,’’ she said. “I have been an online learner for quite a few years because I do have a job and I do have three young children at home.  I don’t think that not speaking in person has been a detriment in any way. Dr. Skeen was very responsive; he was always just a phone call away. ‘’

The mother of three, ages 10, 9 and 8, enrolled in the program to accelerate her career.

“I am looking for the flexibility to move up and teach dual enrollment at the high school level or eventually move forward in getting my Ph.D. to teach at the university level,’’ she said. “The GCU master’s program has been a fabulous experience. Since I am currently teaching, I am able to take the information I am learning as a student and the next day or the next week apply it in my own classroom with my own students – translating those ideas, obviously on a lower level of rigor.‘’

Among those mirrored assignments, the energetic Velasco teaches email writing, social media use and how to write letters of recommendation.

“We do struggle with writing at the middle school level,’’ she said. “They don’t get it and they don’t see the point in it. So I am taking some of the learning theories and application processes from GCU and I am just changing the way I have been teaching writing to make it more realistic. It is interesting to see how students change and respond more positively.’’

Skeen could say the same thing about Velasco: His teaching of the teacher is not just paying off down the road in 2021, it is paying off right now, down the road in a middle school class in Tucson — just as Elmer’s mastery of the CHSS master’s program is impacting her GCU students today.

Contact Theresa Smith at (602) 639-7457 or theresa.smith@gcu.edu.

***

Related content:

Higher Learning Commission: Determining qualified faculty

Inside Higher Ed: Scramble for Dual-Credit Certification 

The post Why new master’s degrees are a win-win appeared first on GCU Today.

By Theresa Smith
GCU News Bureau

In August, Dr. Andrea Alden, an assistant professor of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, published her first book, “Disorder in the Court: Morality, Myth, and the Insanity Defense.” To order the book, click here.

Dr. Andrea Alden, a GCU assistant professor of English,  wrote a book on the insanity defense.

In a behind-the-scenes peek at the writing of the book, GCU Today peppered Alden with questions about her first single-author book project:

How long did it take to research and write the book?

It feels like a really long time, and it has been almost a decade from start to finish. I started the project in 2010 when I was a Ph.D. student; it eventually became my doctoral dissertation, which I completed and defended in October of 2013. I was introduced to the editor of the Rhetoric, Law, and Humanities book series with the University of Alabama Press, Dr. Clarke Rountree, by a colleague who thought he might be interested in the manuscript.

He asked for a formal proposal, which I spent three months drafting (it was five pages long, but I wanted it to be perfect). My proposal did the trick, and I was offered an advance contract in early 2015. I delivered the first draft of the revised manuscript in July of 2016, got my anonymous reviewer feedback in September, revised again, and delivered the final version in June of 2017. The last year was spent on the copy editing and indexing process, and it was finally in print this summer! 

Have you attended any trials in which the insanity defense was used?

I have never attended one, but I spent several years reading about the case studies in the book (which range from the 1700s to the 1980s), and I stay up-to-date on any relevant news stories.

What drew your interest to the trial of John Hinckley Jr.?

The Hinckley trial is the last case study in the book because his was the last trial that resulted in any significant reforms (or attempted reforms) of the legal standards for insanity, and it is the only case I wrote about that took place in my lifetime or in which the defendant is still living.

What is the most controversial aspect of the insanity defense?

The insanity defense is the most controversial subject in criminal law, and it is not very well understood, which adds to its complexity. Both the public and professionals within the criminal justice system subscribe to several pervasive myths about mental illness, about people who suffer from it, and about the insanity defense and what it means.  This is one of the major barriers to sensible reform.

The main argument I make in the book is that the legal understanding of mental illness and its effect on criminal culpability bears no resemblance to the medical and psychiatric understanding of diagnosing and treating mental illness, particularly in light of advances in neuroscience and neuropsychiatry. The criminal justice system is not at all equipped to address the myriad variables that factor into mental illness or its relationship to criminality. 

When and how did your interests in law and psychiatry intersect, leading to this book?

I have always been interested in institutional discourse, both the law and medicine, specifically, as someone who studies language and power, the ways in which people talk about criminal responsibility and mental illness. The insanity defense epitomizes the complexities that arise when two competing sets of institutional discourse collide with conflicting goals.

Contact Theresa Smith at (602) 639-7457 or theresa.smith@gcu.edu.

The post English professor publishes book on the insanity defense appeared first on GCU Today.

Academic Web Services won an award for the Student Success Center.

By Ryan Kryska
GCU News Bureau

Every once in awhile — maybe about as often as a total solar eclipse – something as good as Grand Canyon University’s Student Success Center comes along.

The online resource packed with multimedia learning materials launched the same day as the total eclipse in August 2017 and has garnered close to 1 million searches and a prestigious award in the year that followed.

The mobile-friendly website acts as the home base for more than 1,000 templates, style guides, quizzes, games, tutorials, videos and more, all available to the public but catered toward GCU students and faculty. GCU students can log in to unlock additional content and features, like access to eBooks for their courses.

It was built by the University’s Academic Web Services department, which gathered thoughts from every crevice of the campus before developing.

“If you can dream it up, they will build it for you,” said library services director Nita Mailander, who says she regularly refers students to the website through the Ask a Librarian program. “It really filled a need that we didn’t realize we had. It’s been a real boon for the students.”

The website earned a CODiE Award for the Best Higher Education Learning Content Solution in June from the Software & Information Industry Association. Academic Web Services Director Miranda Hildebrand and Manager Shanna Wise were in San Francisco to accept the award.

“This was truly a collaborative effort driven by student feedback and departmental input throughout the University,” Hildebrand said. “The CODiE award is recognition for Grand Canyon University’s commitment to investing in the development of innovative solutions that help our students achieve academic success.”

Homepage of the Student Success Center

Chris Neikirk, lead designer for the website, said Academic Web Services has been “creating curricular multimedia” for the past 10 years.

“We’ve curated hundreds of multimedia resources along the way, so we wanted to provide a singular space and bring all that together,” Neikirk said. “Before last year’s update the site was just a link farm and we wanted something more robust. We wanted the students to be able to log in and have persistent access so they could save. We wanted to take a true sense of what the student was looking for.”

The site’s current project manager, Brittany Buschatzke, said students’ profiles on the website are curated specifically for their courses, meaning the tools they need most will automatically be the easiest to access.

The center’s homepage has toggle tabs and a log-in spot at the top right and featured and popular resources below. But what sets the Student Success Center apart is its search capabilities.

“It’s all for GCU content, so what they are searching for is almost definitely going to help them whereas if they are Googling, it might help them but they might also be getting incorrect information,” Buschatzke said.

Wise said developers Nathan Harris’ and Jeremy Mone put in at least 1,000 hours of development time in their efforts to maximize the search engine.

“This is one of the most resource-heavy projects we’ve ever invested in,” Wise said. “It’s not just a resource for students on campus or students online — there are resources for anybody. We’ve gone and shared it with other institutions, students in high school can use it — anyone can.”

Hildebrand said she has seen first-hand how the center can be used outside GCU.

“I shared a couple of the resources with my son,” Hildebrand said. “He has taken the periodic table of elements to share with his chemistry teacher in high school and she was excited to share it with her other students. In addition, he shared the writing process with his English teacher and again, she thought it was fabulous and started sharing that resource with her students.

“It’s exciting to see some of our resources not only help college students but also help high-schoolers who are preparing to come to college.”

Contact Ryan Kryska at (602) 639-8415 or ryan.kryska@gcu.edu.

The post Student Success Center innovates way to award appeared first on GCU Today.

Tim Haas’ bass clarinet recital Sept. 27 will feature works inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, the Lydian scale, a beast and even the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

By Lana Sweeten-Shults
GCU News Bureau

Delivering the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers via the might of the bass clarinet?

Just call it a day in the musical life of Grand Canyon University clarinet professor Tim Haas.

Bassoonist and GCU professor Dr. Kristilyn Woods will join Haas in performing “Lyddimy,” written by a local composer, Dr. Thomas Breadon Jr.

Haas doesn’t stick to just the Bachs and the Beethovens when it comes to music, and he prods his students to do the same: “There’s just so much good stuff out there. If you limit yourself to Mozart, you’re missing out on a lot,” he said.

So when it came time to start putting together his first faculty recital of the academic year – it starts at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, in the GCU Recording Studio —  Haas didn’t want to be the reed swayed by the wind of the tried-but-true composers. He wanted to dive into new music.

“The oldest piece (in the recital) is from 2006, so it’s all new stuff,” Haas said, including “The Blues Ranger,” a jazz clarinet piece by Josh Oxford based on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers children’s television series from the 1990s.

It is one of four pieces Haas will perform at the recital, dubbed “21^st Century Bass Clarinet.” The concert will spotlight not only Haas but GCU professor Dr. Kristilyn Woods on bassoon and Mesa Community College clarinet professor Dr. Jeff Quamo on bass clarinet.

“When I was in elementary school, I was a big fan of the television show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” Oxford writes of the work. “Part of the show’s theme (‘Go, go, Power Rangers!’) is embedded a few times in the piece and serves as the basis for a lot of the material. The piece prominently features the blues scale and the octatonic scale, often seamlessly moving from one scale to the other.”

A jazz piece called “Lyddimy,” which Haas will perform with Woods, also prominently features another musical scale – the Lydian diminished scale. George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization influenced the writing of such jazz greats as Miles Davis and Bill Evans and now, the piece’s composer, Glendale Community College professor Dr. Thomas Breadon Jr.

The work “gets really fast at some points and jazzy at some points,” Haas said, and he’ll power through the piece with some improvisation as well.

Dr. Jeff Quamo will perform a bass clarinet duet with Haas on ” … and the Beast …” by composer Jonathan Russell.

The concert also will feature a composition called “… and the Beast …” by Jonathan Russell, a teaching assistant in the Harvard music department. Haas will duet on the work with fellow bass clarinetist Quamo.

Russell said “ … and the Beast …” began its life as an exercise in tuning perfect fifths that grew and morphed into a depiction of a day in the life of the common beast. Each movement depicts a different action of the Beast – waking up, creeping, dancing (or trying to), attacking and, finally, going to sleep.”

“It’s a five-movement work and a very sinister-sounding work,” said Haas, adding, “The piece showcases the entire range of the bass clarinet. The instrument is known for being able to play low notes, but the bass clarinet can also play really, really high notes, too.”

Haas also will delve into “The Flowers of St. Francis” by Daniel Dorff. The composition is inspired by the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order.

U.S. Marine Band bass clarinetist Barbara Haney commissioned Dorff to write her a solo piece to premiere at the 2013 ICA ClarinetFest in Assisi, Italy. The work is divided into five sections: “The Flowers, Celebrated by St. Francis,” “St. Francis Preaching to the Birds,” “St. Francis Pacifying the Wolf,” “St. Francis Preaching to the Fish” and “The Starry Skies, Celebrated by St. Francis.”

“He really uses the bass clarinet to show these scenes,” Haas said.

The audience will hear the bass clarinet erupt in bright sounds that emulate birds chirping in “St. Francis Preaching to the Birds.” It puts to music the story of St. Francis imploring hundreds of birds: “Oh birds, my brothers and sisters, you have a great obligation to praise your Creator, who clothed you in feathers and gave you wings to fly with, provided you with pure air and cares for you without any worry on your part.” It is said the birds stood still and gazed at him attentively as he walked among them.

They also will hear daunting wolf sounds during “St. Francis Pacifying the Wolf.” It is based on the story of St. Francis intervening when the townspeople of Gubbio, Italy, wanted to kill a wolf that had been killing livestock and people. According to the story, St. Francis tamed the wolf, talking it into never killing again. The wolf would become a pet of the townspeople, who made sure he always had plenty to eat.

Two of Haas’ GCU music students who are also digital design students – Julia Gregory and Athena Russell – are creating artwork to be displayed during the performance.

Gregory created two different artworks for the recital: One is inspired by the fourth movement, “St. Francis Preaching to the Fish,” when “the bubbles come in,” she said, as well as a work that shows St. Francis in the midst of a starry night. Russell will display three digitally painted artworks. The other uses bright colors to represent a field of flowers under bright moonlight, a monochrome birds piece that uses dark and light shades of a reddish-burgundy tone, and then a work that will represent the serene portion of the wolf movement.

“The best part about listening to music and getting inspiration from it is when each part of the music tells a different story — and being able to bring that story from the ear into a visual perspective,” Gregory said.

“What inspired me about the music,” said Russell, “is that each movement conveyed a vastly different ‘feeling’ from the last.”

She said “Pacifying the Wolf” influenced her the most: “I had to pay attention to how the half of the piece I was painting differed from the other half. I had to portray the stark difference between the angry wolf from the beginning of the movement and the wolf that became St. Francis’ companion later on, so I wanted to make a piece that is somber, yet warm. Hopefully these ideas come through to the audience in the completed paintings.”

Haas, GCU professor of clarinet, started performing on bass clarinet about 10 years ago.

Haas, who is from San Diego, started playing clarinet when he was in sixth grade – but not without some protest.

His mother suggested that he sign up for band; he repeatedly told her no.

“When I got to the first day of sixth grade, I was in my second period class and the teacher made an announcement: ‘The following people are to go over to the high school, which was right next to the middle school, for band,’ and he called my name.”

When the band director asked him to choose an instrument, he picked the clarinet because it looked the most like a recorder, which he played “a little” in fifth grade.

He remembers how mad he was at his mom for signing him up for band, but he doesn’t feel that way these days: “I think of that story a lot,” Haas said. “My mother passed away in January, and I know if it wouldn’t have been for her, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University – his parents’ alma mater – and his master’s degree from Florida State University, Haas decided to take a year off before pursuing his doctorate, so he moved back to Phoenix.

“I came very close to giving up on music,” he said.

He worked a couple of jobs while trying to build a private studio and land some gigs. Then his second year here, post master’s degree, things started to take off.

“I was incredibly fortunate to be in the right place at the right time for a lot of things, including getting the position here at GCU.”

Haas has been an instructor in the music department since 2012. In addition, he performs with the Symphony of the Southwest, the Canyon Symphony Orchestra, the West Valley Symphony and the Four Seasons Orchestra. He also teaches saxophone and clarinet at his private studio.

Haas’ love of the bass clarinet started about a decade ago. He bought a bass clarinet, hoping it would help him in booking performances. Around the same time, he took on a bass clarinet student. He hadn’t done much bass clarinet playing until then and had to do a lot of research on bass clarinet repertoire for his student to play.

“As I found more and started listening to more bass clarinet solos, like the ones I am performing at the recital, I started to see how versatile an instrument it is – it isn’t just for playing the bass line.”

He’s hoping that by performing these new works, “students will hear music they might not ordinarily get exposed to. I want to show my students what’s out there.”

He added, “The more I play the bass clarinet, the more I fall in love with it, and I love showcasing what the instrument can do.”

Contact GCU senior writer Lana Sweeten-Shults at 602-639-7901 or at lana.sweeten-shults@gcu.edu.

IF YOU GO

What: “21st Century Bass Clarinet”

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27

Where: GCU Recording Studio in the Technology Building (Building 57), fourth floor

Admission: Free

Information: 602-639-8880 or ethington@gcu.edu

****

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The post It’s all about that bass (clarinet) at Haas recital appeared first on GCU Today.

Canyon 49 Grill has released new menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

By Ryan Kryska
GCU News Bureau

Thursday night looked like this for a chunk of the staff at Canyon 49 Grill: Loading up a truck full of food and supplies. Driving hours up to Prescott for a United Way charity event. Cooking, serving and cleaning up into the night — then driving back to Phoenix to get a not-so-good night’s sleep.

Friday, however, looked like a normal day. It was business as usual for the dedicated staff that has revamped its menus, changed the way its special events run and refocused its mission of serving the Grand Canyon University community and beyond.

Brett Cortright, the GCU Hotel manager, and Marcus Maggiore, the Grill’s executive chef, want you to taste what’s cooking over at the 27th Avenue hotel restaurant, open from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

For starters, the dinner menu features new appetizers such as a Baja shrimp ceviche dish that mixes sweet jalapeno, cucumber, red onion and cilantro with fresh shrimp for the perfect tortilla chip scoop.

The soup and salad selection has been changed to fit the fall season, including a grilled salmon quinoa salad with all the right toppings and a chicken tortilla soup from the old menu that was too good to nix.

Entrees now include chipotle chicken mac and cheese, blackened cod, salmon and a New York strip steak with a house chipotle honey butter and chorizo potato hash.

The lunch menu has a new beef short rib sandwich, and breakfast features a corned beef hash dish that Cortright said can make anyone a corned-beef believer.

A Southwest burrito on Canyon 49 Grill’s new breakfast menu.

“I would never … in fact, I would go so far as to say I can’t stand corned beef hash,” Cortright said. “And ours rocks.”

Anyone who eats breakfast at the restaurant will be treated to a free smoothie on the next trip in. Just hold onto the receipt from your meal and show it on the next visit.

“We upped our game completely and tried to make food you would get in any high-end restaurant approachable to the student body and to our local guests,” Maggiore said. “It’s a chance for us to kind of show off what we can do as chefs, a chance to make the best food we can.”

Maggiore says 90 percent of the grill’s food is made from scratch. They take pride in that. Maggiore, Cortright and Sous Chef Mike Willison combine for more than 30 years of experience in hotel dining.

“I think the more people we can get in the building to see what we are doing, the more they are going to gravitate toward us because they are going to realize we are the hidden gem on the property,” Maggiore said. “If you haven’t come to see us, you are kind of missing out.”

The restaurant has multiple events for employees and students, one of which is Friday dorm nights.

“We have retro video games out for free and free movies and popcorn,” Cortright said. “Students should know that they can come here every Friday. It’s not like they have to wait for their dorm’s dorm night.”

Both student and employees receive a 10 percent discount to the Grill, and students can use their dining dollars. There’s also a free shuttle that runs from campus to Canyon 49 every 20 minutes until 10 p.m.

The restaurant staff hosts free wine tastings on Wednesday and runs cooking classes on Thursday, which have been a hit as of late. It also has started a monthly “culinary journey around the world” meal that features plates from a specific region.

“It gives our hotel guests and our employees something fun to do and reminds them that we are here for them,” Cortright said.

Maggiore says the restaurant also has plenty of entertainment to stay after a meal and is the go-to place before and after GCU sporting events.

“We have a foosball table, ping-pong table, giant Jenga, we have a patio, we have the environment where everyone can come and just hang out and have fun,” Maggiore said. “You don’t have to travel. Just come across 27th Avenue.”

Contact Ryan Kryska at (602) 639-8415 or ryan.kryska@gcu.edu.

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The post Canyon 49 Grill revamps menus, entertainment appeared first on GCU Today.

GCU students read aloud amendments 22-27 on Constitution Day.

By Ryan Kryska
GCU News Bureau

Freshman government major Nolan Dominguez stood outside Prescott Hall with patriotic shades, an American Flag bandana and a microphone in hand on Monday to speak aloud amendments to the Constitution.

Dominguez read amendments 22-27, while seniors Cristian Clementi and Jacob Root facilitated the trio’s Constitution Day booth. They passed out stickers, flyers for future events and emptied their stock of pocket Constitutions — more than 150 booklets donated by the Leadership Institute.

Jacob Root passes out freebies while Nolan Dominguez reads the Constitution.

“It’s important that we have Constitution Day because not everyone knows the first five amendments to the Constitution,” said Clementi, a sports management major and vice president of Turning Point USA at Grand Canyon University. “We’ve all gone through American government and history classes, but we just forget it. And to know that we have our right to privacy, we have the right to free speech and free assembly and the freedom of religion, all of this is what makes America such a great country.”

Dominguez read for about 15 minutes, not minding the sweat dripping down his face and the valuable time he was using between classes.

“It’s a privilege, really, to be able to speak the words our forefathers gave to us,” Dominguez said. “And it’s still relevant in today’s world. We live in a time where people are like, ‘Oh well, he’s this. I don’t believe in that, so I’m not going to listen to what he’s saying.’ And it’s like this Constitution is what breaks down the barriers. This was written so long ago that they never intended for us to have this party system that we have now today. It’s just so important that we take time to reflect back on the past to change the future.”

Professor Kevin Walling teaches his class about the Constitution.

The students ran the stand with support from College of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor Kevin Walling, who spent the day teaching about the Constitution in his class Government 357: Philosophy of Law.

“Constitution Day helps us reflect on and appreciate our chief social contract of the United States,” Walling said, “(It) helps us understand how our government functions and what our relationship with our government is. It also helps us better understand our rights and how our government should protect our rights.”

Walling said he looks forward to the lesson at the beginning of every academic year. He says he teaches students basic structure of the U.S. government and helps them understand their rights.

“To know that we have our right to privacy, we have the right to free speech and free assembly and the freedom of religion, all of this is what makes America such a great country,” Clementi said. “And people say, ‘Yeah, America is great.’ But they don’t know necessarily why and the liberties that we have that makes it such a great nation. It’s essential to me, and I’m glad that everyone was able to get a free pocket Constitution today.”

Contact Ryan Kryska at (602) 639-8415 or ryan.kryska@gcu.edu.

The post We the Lopes: Constitution Day hits campus appeared first on GCU Today.

By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau

The pain. Joni Eareckson Tada kept talking about the pain, the overwhelming pain, both physical and mental. It is a wonder she even gets out of bed every morning — always needing assistance just to do that.

“After 50 years in a wheelchair, you’d think I’d be used to this, you’d think I’d be a veteran at this,” she told the Chapel audience Monday morning at Grand Canyon University Arena. “I’m not. Every morning, I wake up facing quadriplegia and chronic pain and I think, ‘Oh, God, put me back to sleep. I can’t face this day, I’m so overwhelmed.’”

But her caregivers are doing more than just lifting her up physically. It is as if they are Christ’s arms and strength.

Joni Eareckson Tada lives just outside Los Angeles, where she operates her Joni and Friends ministry. (Photo by Gillian Rea)

“Christians are the agents of comfort and mercy,” said Tada, whose Joni and Friends ministry goes around the world to help the disabled, “and when you reach down and help the least and the last of the brethren, you not only give them the Gospel of friends, you’re becoming the Gospel to them.”

In a talk bookended by standing ovations from the crowd of more than 6,000, Tada recounted how she became paralyzed in July 1967 when she dove into shallow water.

She told of how she couldn’t imagine going from an active, busy childhood to a life without use of her arms and legs.

She said she wanted to die.

She talked about the Bible verses she heard then: from James 1 (welcome this trial as a friend), Romans 5 (rejoice in suffering), Philippians 1 (it has been given to you to suffer on His behalf) and Romans 8:28 (it somehow would fit into a pattern for good).

“It was just too much for me. I had so many questions, I felt like gagging on those verses,” she said. “(There were) big questions that I had, and I was near to throwing in the spiritual towel.”

A visit from her high school friend Jackie was the spiritual turning point. Jackie snuck into her hospital ward in the middle of the night and curled up next to her in bed, holding her tight, and sang this verse from “Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

“Man of sorrows!” What a name.

For the son of God who came

Ruined sinners to reclaim.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

It was exactly what Tada needed.

“That night, something changed. Something she did touched me like nothing else,” Tada said. “And it’s odd because that night I did not get answers. But suddenly the questions weren’t that urgent.

“You see, God’s got His reasons for allowing so much pain and heartache and suffering, and those reasons are good and right and true. But I will be the first to tell you that when your heart is being rung out like a sponge, an orderly list of the 16 good biblical reasons as to why this is happening, it can sting like salt in the wound. You don’t stop the bleeding with the answers.

“Oh yes, there comes a time when people stop asking ‘Why?’ with a clenched fist and start asking ‘Why?’ with a searching heart. And that’s a great time for the Bible’s answers. But when the suffering is fresh, answers don’t always reach the problem where it hurts, and that’s in the gut and in the heart.”

Tada’s ministry seeks more people to do what Jackie did, and she was quick to note that “God’s not looking for experts. He’s just looking for people to meet a need.” God is in the middle of our suffering, but we need people — God’s change agents — to help with it, too.

She has seen how easy it is – too easy – for people to just keep the disabled at arm’s length, even when offering a kind word or generous donation.

“God has a different way,” she said. “He wants us to hook our veins up to that hurting person who is hemorrhaging human strength and pour into them as if giving a spiritual transfusion – warm, personal, the life-giving love of Jesus Christ.”

Tada is a renowned speaker, and it took two years to get her on the Chapel schedule. Monday, it was easy to see why. The crowd broke into applause when she said:

“I can’t do quadriplegia, but I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me, so help me, Jesus. Let me tell you something: For those of you who are dealing with disappointment and hurt in your life, that is the biblical way to wake up in the morning. That is the Christian way to wake up in the morning – desperately needing Jesus. And you can help people like me desperately need Jesus.”

Anyone who wants to help can go to wheelsfortheworld.org or bit.ly/donate-az. There are millions of people who need a reason to get out of bed in the morning, even if it means another day of pain and suffering.

● For a replay of Chapel, including the music performed by the Worship Team, click here.

● Next week’s speaker will be Mia Koehne of Mia Koehne Music.

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or rick.vacek@gcu.edu.

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Film and television production executive Thomas Brodek talks to students about his career and how to get a job in the industry.

By Lana Sweeten-Shults
GCU News Bureau

B-film fans might have cozied up to “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” But Thomas Brodek, who spoke to Grand Canyon University film and television students on Monday in Ethington Theatre, found a certain flight of fancy, instead, in the bee-attack film “The Savage Bees.”

He worked as a co-producer with director Bruce Geller on the 1979 movie – about the horrors that befall Mardi Gras in New Orleans when a swarm of African killer bees escape from a foreign freighter.

“We had to cast the bees,” said Brodek, acknowledging that, yes, it’s an unusual thing to actually cast bees for a film. “And we had to find a bee handler. So what has this got to do with movies? Well, that’s what movies are all about. … We could not film in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. .. We had to close off the French Quarter and had to create our own Mardi Gras. We had to buy out all these shops along the French Quarter because we were stopping the customers from spending money in their store during filming. We had hundreds of extras.”

Then there was that pivotal scene when the bee handler coaxed thousands of bees to land on a Volkswagen Beetle and blanket it. The bee handler took the queen bee out of a tiny box, placed it on the VW Bug and, voila, instant bee-encrusted VW Bug.

“This is the point I’m making: Being in production is not dull and boring. That’s it,” said Brodek.

Brodek’s job is to advise filmmakers on how much it would cost to make a movie, whom not to hire and where to film, among other considerations.

The University of Southern California film graduate has made a career out of TV and film production (including for ABC Productions and Showtime’s “The Tudors” and “The Borgias”), and he recalled that time when a friend of his from Warner Bros. contacted him to help coordinate the “Black Sunday” scene where a blimp landed in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at halftime.

Although the scene never was used in the movie, to try to make it happen he had to fly to Akron, Ohio, headquarters for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which makes the most famed blimp, the Goodyear Blimp, to talk to people in the know. He traveled to the Goodyear landing site in Hawthorne, Calif., where the West Coast blimp was stored, met with the L.A. Coliseum Commission, met with the L.A. Fire and Police departments, then flew to New York to coordinate with the NFL and back to Los Angeles to speak with the Los Angeles Rams organization.

Then he had to budget. It would cost roughly $1.2 million.

“My favorite project would be one so complicated from my life and demanded me to figure out how I would accomplish this,” Brodek said with a smile.

All those logistics is the reason he’s not a big fan of computer-generated imagery. For a producer like him, CGI sucks some of the fun out of his job.

Brodek is now an independent producer – his company is Brodek Productions – and has settled in Wickenburg after working in the industry in Hamburg, Germany, where he headed up the European division of a commercial production company at Studio Hamburg; Studio City and Pasadena, Calif.; and Carefree, where he managed Southwestern Studios.

These days, he uses his logistical skills as a line producer.

“If you don’t know what that means, it means I’m a mechanic,” he said. “I don’t sell. I don’t convince major studios or production companies to buy a movie. I wait for the phone to ring.”

When the phone does ring, it’s a filmmaker who wants to know whom NOT to hire as the director or actor and how long it will take to shoot. Brodek tells them how much a film might cost, where they might film that would financially make sense and if a certain area offers tax credits, for example.

“Lorraine, my partner and best friend and love of 56 years … when we graduated from USC film school 900 years ago, there were only seven major movie studios in L.A. — seven. There were seven motion picture production companies. There were four television stations and a few other things going on. What you have now are hundreds of possibilities for your career. I really do envy that and want you to be excited about that,” Brodek said.

Students delving into film and television can even work from Phoenix if they want, he said, and maintain that creative process via Skype meetings, emails and the like.

Brodek speaks with students after his talk on Monday in Ethington Theatre.

“One of the great things about your opportunities is that the world is now flat. It’s not round anymore,” he said. “The telephone and the internet have flattened my life, which for me is very exciting because now we can have a meeting from my home with someone in Budapest, and we can be on Skype, and we can see each other, and we can discuss things and get to know each other. That’s fabulous and I LOVE that.”

But he emphasized: “The problem with that is it still goes back to the old saying, ‘You can’t see eye to eye unless you’re face to face.’ So there’s nothing that can take the place of actually sitting in front of somebody and talking to them and having them talk to you.”

He added that while film and TV students can work in the industry from anywhere, they have to realize there might be some disadvantages working far from Hollywood or New York.

“That shortens and smallifies your career, but that’s OK,” he said. “At least it’s home, and there are television stations and a few production companies that might be interested in you and you in them. But just understand that that’s not going to look as broad on your resume or CV (curriculum vitae). If you really want a big career, then you really need to look into Los Angeles.”

Brodek said students should connect with job sources, such as Cynopsis, Entertainment Careers, Ladders, the Hollywood Reporter, the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the like, many of which are free-of-charge sources for jobs. If they’re not, those publications and organizations might offer a student rate – or even waive the fee.

The Directors Guild of America sends out notifications, for one, that are “invaluable.” He said information from The Beverly Hills Bar Association might seem odd, but it’s been vital to him as a producer. Usually the lawyers in the entertainment industry “get the first indication on their desk that a project seems to be coming together because all the people in the production company and in the networks and major studios go to the lawyers to have them figure out if they can make a deal on this.”

He told students to have their curriculum vitae ready and, while he loves email, “there is nothing to replace sending someone in the mail your CV and a cover letter saying I want a job, I need a job because I’m terrific, because of my experience. This is what I want to do in life. This is what I believe in. I believe in mailing it to them in a big, heavy envelope, not one of those little legal envelopes that you see, but a big, heavy envelope because it’s more likely they’ll open it. Send it registered mail — yes, it costs you more money — and a return receipt requested, which means they are forced to sign a document to say they’ve got it. That has always worked great for me.”

He advised students to ask if they need a favor in the industry: “If you don’t ask, you don’t receive. … Go to the general manager wherever you’re trying to film and say, ‘Hi, we want to do this movie here, and we’re not going to mess anything up, and we have insurance. We’re well behaved. Here’s a copy of my Code of Conduct.’ … Don’t be afraid because people can turn around and say, ‘I didn’t realize, no problem.'”

He also said it’s not necessarily whom you know but when you know them: “These people change jobs, and I’m making this up every 18 months.”

Some other advice:

• If you make a mistake, be the first person to own up to it. If you own up to it and tell your boss the solution you came up with, it’s likely you won’t get fired.
• Your mom was wrong about not talking to strangers. “I’ve learned more from talking to strangers than talking to people I know,” Brodek said. “So, sorry, Mom, I talk to strangers.”
• Take at least one law class and one general business class so you’re at least familiar with the vocabulary. Television and film isn’t just about acting and writing. It’s also about legal and business documents.
• “My father told me, ‘Take a course in salesmanship.’ … Getting the vocabulary and awareness of salesmanship is very, very important.’”
• He pointed students to programs such as MovieMagic, which helps with movie budgeting, and www.nofilmschool.com, which he said is “just absolutely wonderful.”
• Once you do get a job, get your name on the daily production report and the call sheet. Brodek was able to join the Directors Guild by walking in and presenting the organization with copies of the production reports with his name on it. “With that list of experience, the Directors Guild voted me in as a member.”
• Keep up with the Arizona Office of Film and Digital Media: “You should get your CV or resume out to (Director) Matthew Earl Jones right away if you’re really looking for a job.”

When it comes to film and TV production, Brodek said he loves the logistics and multitasking of it all.

At the end of Brodek’s talk, one student asked, “How do you decide who shouldn’t be hired?”

Brodek said he does his homework, calls assistant directors and others in the industry who could convey information about a certain director, for example, and if that director might not have shown up to work when they should have or caused a film to fall way behind schedule. He tries to find out if a particular cast member under consideration has been to rehab nine times. He gets his information from multiple sources and told students the idea is to “take that information off your shoulders and take it back to the production company.”

Another student wanted to know how he got started in the industry.

“I wanted to be a television director on a series. In those days, the series weren’t owned by the studios or the production company. The series was owned by the advertiser,” he said, such as “My Three Sons,” which was run by Hunts Foods and Industries and its advertising agency, Young & Rubicam.

So he started his career working for an advertising agency, including seven years as president of the European operation of that company: “I learned more in television commercial production than I did in anything else because we were shooting one, two, three days every week. I had experience in filming 32,000 feet above sea level, at 200 feet below sea level. I shot in 130-degree heat in Death Valley, and I shot in 60 degrees below. So over those years, it gave me an incredible line of experience.”

After moving back to California, he attended industry workshops, where he broadened his friendships and relationships and ended up landing a job with a major production company. “That’s when everything came together,” he said.

Lisa Tervo, Chair of GCU’s Department of Digital Film Production, said the department brings in speakers often, about once a month, to meet with students.

“It’s to help students network outside of faculty,” she said, adding, “If you just make films for yourself during your time here, then you might as well have not been here.”

Brodek didn’t limit himself that way in his career. As he said, “Being in production is not dull and boring. That’s it.”

Contact GCU senior writer Lana Sweeten-Shults at lana.sweeten-shults@gcu.edu or at 602-639-7901.

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Sue Stratman holds the microphone for her son, Daniel.

Story by Theresa Smith
Photos by Slaven Gujic
GCU News Bureau

Sue Stratman’s doctor advised abortion, warning that her daughter might inherit the same heart condition of her son, Daniel. But Sue and her husband, Jay, were unwavering in their pro-life beliefs and she continued her pregnancy, giving birth to a healthy daughter who is now 31 years old.

This anecdote was one of several that Stratman shared with the audience at Grand Canyon University’s second annual Bioethics Conference, “Human Dignity: Clash of World Views.”

Her first challenge occurred after he was born with a heart defect, requiring open-heart surgery when he was five days old, and again at age 8 and age 10. In July 1996, Daniel underwent a routine hernia surgery but emerged with significant brain damage, blindness and the inability to walk because, she said,  the anesthesiologist failed to set the blood pressure machine and set the anesthesia too high for too long.

Stratman not only forgave the anesthesiologist and other hospital workers, she continued a faithful life of service, caring for all of her children, sharing her story in a book by Dianne C. Reynolds, “When Losing is Winning” and making speaking appearances like the one on Monday.

Critical Mass, GCU’s a cappella ensemble, performed.

The audience of GCU students and local church community members, included Morgan Clarke, a junior psychology major who was moved by the Stratman family’s experience.

“When Sue and her son Daniel presented that impacted me the most, just her story of grace and forgiving people for something that,’’ she said. “He went in for hernia surgery and came out … not that he has any less life in him, but that they were able to forgive that hospital.  I think that is God’s grace. Her resilience is a strong character trait that I admire. It was great to hear from her. She stuck to her convictions in being pro-life and advocating for her son and advocating for her daughter who wasn’t born yet.’’

Stratman and Daniel were among four speakers at the event, which began with Chapel speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of the nonprofit organization Joni and Friends. Among other initiatives, the organization provides wheelchairs for people all over the world. Tada has been confined to a wheelchair since she was injured in a 1967 diving accident.

Raising the bar

“Joni’s message resonated with our students, ’’ said Kimberly LaPrade, Dean of the College of Education, noting the thousands of students at GCU Arena who gave Tada two standing ovations.

“Our students have their heart for service; they will roll up their sleeves to help with Joni and Friends. To have Joni kick us off and then to follow with these great speakers was a highlight. As far as this being the second annual conference, this just raised the bar from last year, so we’re on that trajectory. It was a collaborative effort: the College of Theology, the College of Education, the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, Dean of Students Pastor Tim Griffin, along with events services, food service, security, faculty, and then the community brings all that together. It doesn’t get better than that.’’

Scott Klusendorf debates for pro-life at the conference.

After Chapel and lunch, the event moved a few hundred yards to the First Southern Baptist Church, adjacent to campus. Critical Mass, GCU’s a cappella ensemble, performed an assortment of energetic religious songs, followed by the opening remarks of GCU President Brian Mueller and a prayer by Dr. Tim Griffin, Pastor and Dean of Students, who served as the emcee. 

Scott Klusendorf shared his powerfully logical and passionate pro-life message, guiding the audience through strategies to debate people who favor abortion. He emphasized the lack of difference between an unborn human and a born human, as in what justifies the killing of the unborn?

The four main differences, as enumerated by Klusendorf, are Size, Level of development, Environment and Degree of dependency, remembered with the acronym SLED.

In terms of size, for example, Klusendorf reasoned that if killing a toddler is immoral and illegal, then so is killing the smaller human, the unborn. Similarly, how does being a less developed human, the unborn, disqualify the unborn from protection?

In terms of environment, the changes from the womb to outside the womb should not affect the value of a person, according to Klusendorf. As for dependency, toddlers need their parents for nutrition and safe surroundings, just like the unborn, and dependency should not disqualify the unborn from being treated as a person, meaning free to be born.

An audience member reacts to the heartbreaking loss described by the speaker.

“They assume the unborn are not human, so when you are arguing with people on this issue ask them, ‘Does it apply to killing a toddler?'” Klusendorf said.

“People will say, ‘Why don’t you trust women to make their own personal decisions? Can you trust a woman (mother) and father who are beating a toddler in the privacy of their home?'”

He also compared the development of a human to that of a Polaroid camera — the picture is there, and it slowly appears on the photo paper.

“From the one-cell stage you were already there; we just couldn’t see you because you were still developing,’’ he said. “That is the embryology of it.’’

He exhorted his audience to follow three steps: 1. Clarify the issue; 2. Defend your pro-life position with science and philosophy; 3. Challenge your listeners to be intellectually honest.

Defending the unborn neighbor

Klusendorf made this call to action: “Step up and defend your unborn neighbor. State your case for life. GCU students, I am glad that you are equipped to defend what you believe and to be ambassadors for life.’’

In an interview afterward, he said, “Our country is having a huge argument over two key questions that impacts every student at Grand Canyon University, every one of their parents, and their kids and grandkids for generations to come. Our nation is quabbling over the question of what makes humans value and is moral truth true with a capital T, or is it just a preference like choosing chocolate ice cream over vanilla?

“You have to know how to answer those two questions if you are a Christian. And if you don’t come to conferences like this, then you are going to have to find a way to learn yourself how to answer them. I’d rather come to a conference where I can be taught how to think about these things and get resources to think them through logically and biblically than to be left on my own. So I absolutely affirm a conference like this.’’

The audience shows appreciation for the passionate speakers.

After Klusendorf’s intellectually oriented speech, courageous, heart-filled tales were told by Sue Stratman, who included comments from Daniel, via lip reading – for two years after the botched hernia surgery he could not speak, and his atrophied vocal cords have not regained their volume.

Another anecdote Stratman shared represented another moral dilemma. After traveling numerous times from their St. Louis home to Florida for treatment in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which improved some of Daniel’s functions, the doctor strongly advised the family to travel to the Dominican Republic for stem cell transplants from aborted fetuses.

“We refused,’’ Stratman said. “We will not compromise our Christian worldview. Daniel’s life gives glory every day. God has been sovereign and faithful to us.’’

In a most recent example, Daniel prepared for a trip to Israel by listening to the entire Bible seven times.

Grieving loss at the start of life

The final speaker, Suzanne Helzer, a nurse manager at First Way Pregnancy Center in Phoenix, works daily with women in crisis pregnancies. Helzer, a recent cancer survivor, shared her story of being a teen mom and giving up her baby for adoption. Now, she works with families who are dealing with loss at the start of life, including from abortion, miscarriage and stillbirth.

“When grief of pregnancy loss is not handled well PTSD can develop,’’ she said. “Also, prolonged grief can affect future pregnancies and future children.’’

Helzer advocates for “maximizing the opportunities for parenthood. What were the hopes and dreams for the child? So momentos are important and allowing time for decisions to avoid regrets.’’

In that vein, Helzer spoke of things parents can do before saying goodbye to their child, including naming the child, holding the child, bathing the child, putting lotion on the child, dressing the child, taking photos and planning the child’s funeral.

“Opportunities like these should be provided at all hospitals and birth centers,’’ she said.

Helzer also spoke of involving the entire family in the grief process.

Suzanne Helzer enumerates ways to maximize the brief opportunities for parents experiencing loss at the start of life.

Clarke said afterward, “We don’t really focus on that part because we are thinking about the mother being the one carrying the child. But fathers create a very strong attachment before the child is even born, so it is important to focus on the family as a unit instead of just the mother.’’

Clarke recently completed a child and adolescent development class and is taking an adult development class.

“We are studying the grief process, loss and death and mortality right now,’’ she said. “I wasn’t expecting to come here today, so I am really excited and glad that I did. I definitely learned a lot and I am going to use it in my classes too.’’

The impactful conference concluded with a panel discussion involving all the speakers. It was quite interesting as audience members asked insightful questions ranging from tips for arguing with a pro-abortion utilitarian to placenta cord blood banking, to use of cooling cots to extend the life of a baby who is dying, to the grief experienced when one twin survives and the other dies.

Contact Theresa Smith at (602) 639-7457 or theresa.smith@gcu.edu.

***

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GCU Today: Conference addresses faith and science

The post A celebration of the sanctity of life appeared first on GCU Today.

Dr. Deb Wade

By Dr. Deb Wade
GCU Vice President, Counseling and Psychological Services

Static! It’s all around us. Just take a moment and listen … do you hear an air conditioner, a car going by, a child playing outside, the television in the next room, people chatting, a crying baby, an older gentleman whistling as he goes down the way?

Some of the noise is pleasant, some of it is annoying and some of it is soothing, but mostly, the noise is ever present. More important, however, is the static that is inside your own head!

There is an old country song that has the phrase, “I hear voices all the time …” (Chris Young – “Voices”), about the myriad messages that we carry from people in our past. Of course, in the song, the messages are good ones: 

“Daddy saying, ‘Work that job but don’t work your life away,’ and Mama telling me to drop some cash in the offering plate …”

Daddy sayin’, “Quit that team and you’ll be a quitter for the rest of your life, and Mama telling me to say a prayer every time I lay down at night.” 

What is the static in your head telling you? Are the “voices” giving you sound advice, good messages, uplifting reminders? Or is your head full of negative static from degrading, demeaning messages that keep replaying and gaining power in your psyche?

Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, once wrote about the “obnoxious roommate” that lives in one’s head. She, too, was referring to the voices from the past that could be quite destructive: a childhood bully, an influential person who belittled you or told you what you couldn’t be.

Does this ring true for you? Does the static in your own brain echo with condemnation, criticism, castigation or chastisement?

Whatever the case may be, here is the powerful truth: Your head, your control!

Take inventory of the “roommates” in your head! Are they supporting you, believing in you, loving you, encouraging you, cheering you on? Great! Make them your “forever roommates!”

However, maybe there are some roommates you need to evict … NOW! Without hesitancy, boot that obnoxious roommate to the curb! You have the absolute power to eradicate the negative static in your brain if it has become negative in any way. You will love the result:

• Freedom from condemnation!
• Freedom from limitations!
• Freedom from dream-stealers!
• Freedom from mean-spirited, hurtful edicts!

So remember, if you have “voices” in your head and they are not promoting, celebrating or encouraging you … MUTE THEM! If the static inside your own head is condemning or critical, CLEAR IT OUT!

Why? Because, YOU and I have much better stuff to “listen” to!

The post Dr. Deb’s Mental Health Vitamin: Clearing out static appeared first on GCU Today.