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 Discover CONHS at GCUA brief history of nursing at GCU - 1949 - Grand Canyon College formed in Prescott
- 1951 - GCC relocated to Phoenix
- 1984 - First nursing class graduated
- 1989 - GCC became GCU
- 1998 - RN-B program offered
- 2003 - Masters program started
- Fall 2004 - First stand-alone undergraduate
- pre-licensure fast track at GCU
- Fall 2004 - Samaritan College of Nursing became College of Nursing
- Summer 2005 - Partnership with SJHMC (fast track)
- Spring 2007 - College of Nursing transitioned to College of Nursing and Health Sciences Started pre-licensure fast track program in Tucson.
- Fall 2007 - Focus on simulation begins
- January 2008 - New cohort of transfer students from St. Kitts, West Indies arrived in Phoenix
Founded in 1949, Grand Canyon University is a premier, private, accredited, Christian university located in Phoenix, Arizona. The University offers online and campus-based Bachelor's and Master's degree programs through the Ken Blanchard College of Business, College of Education, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and College of Humanities and Social Sciences and supports both traditional undergraduate students as well as the working professional.
Students enjoy Phoenix's 300 days of annual sunshine, major league sports, culture, recreation, and of course, the incomparable Grand Canyon just four hours away. Campus students enjoy modern dormitories, an array of social activities, a state-of-the-art exercise and wellness facility, ten different NCAA sports, and opportunities to participate in community outreach programs to genuinely make a difference.
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A Death and a DreamThe Grand Canyon University story began in the 1920s with the demise of a small Baptist college, Montezuma College, in New Mexico. Two or three students and faculty of that school, consecrated there to the cause of Christian education, cached away a dream of one day building another school for the glory of God. The dream resurfaced in the mid 1940s in a business meeting of Arizona Southern Baptists in Casa Grande, Arizona. Pastor L. D. White of Calvary Baptist Church plunked a shiny silver dollar on a wooden table at the front of the room and proffered its value as the first donation toward a Baptist college in Arizona. Dozens of others followed, including a widow with a jar of pennies and a Montezuma alumnus who wrote a hundred dollar check. Enthusiasm seized everyone, everyone except Dr. Willis J. Ray.
Dr. Ray, a pastor and executive secretary of the fledgling Arizona Southern Baptist Convention, thought his fellow Baptists were getting in over their heads. Asked to take up the offering, he politely declined. Events over the next few years nearly proved him right. Enthusiasm for the project waned, as problems, setbacks, debts, and discouragements accumulated. Everyone gave up on the hope of the Baptist college, everyone except Dr. Willis J. Ray. His faith crystallized even as others dissipated, a fact the first board of trustees began to appreciate. Eventually, they asked Dr. Ray to serve as the little college's first president. A Montezuma alumnus, Vernon Shipp, became the first chairman of the board of trustees. Another, Dr. Roland Beck, became its first professor. And so, Grand Canyon College came into existence.
In 1949, classrooms opened to 93 students in Prescott, Arizona. Two years of financial drought followed, spelled by occasional showers of generosity and the steady, sturdy growth of academic excellence and an athletic reputation. On October 8, 1951, Grand Canyon College relocated to the present campus in Phoenix. A handful of faithful pioneers Roland Beck in education, Betty Beck in English, Niles Puckett and D. C. Martin in religion, H. E. TenHarkle and Grace Weller in music, Shihj-Ming Wang in mathematics, Clarice Maben in history, and David and Mildred Brazell in athletics left their respective chances for prosperity to build the tiny college into a beacon of Christian education.
Their work paid off with the announcement of regional accreditation by the North Central Association in 1968. National championships began to accrue in basketball, baseball, and women's tennis. With the 1980s, the academic program expanded into colleges of education, nursing, business, performing arts, and arts and sciences. Masters programs were developed in education, and shortly thereafter, in business.
The 1980s also witnessed an expansion of "Canyon's" guiding theme. "Spiritual Emphasis" weekly sermons by the Reverend Tom Wolf of Los Angeles fired the spirit and seized the imagination of Grand Canyon's faculty, staff, and students in 1982. Wolf proposed that all Christians are commissioned to missions and missions support and that the college was uniquely positioned to address that commission. He argued that mission work should increasingly depend not solely on evangelists but also on laymen, who give witness while cultivating their secular professions in the international marketplace. These ideas became part of a new global emphasis at Grand Canyon University.
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