Visit to Grand Canyon University
by Rick Archibald

We visited Grand Canyon University on September 15.

We started with an welcome speech by Dr. James Helfers, the Dean of Liberal Arts. We were given overviews of university structure and faculty roles by Dr. Leanna Hall, Professor Greg Hickman, and Professor David Reiter. We then met Professor Beth Dawkins and Professor Peter Papadopol from the department of Mathematics. We discussed several topics related to the roles of faculty in the department of Mathematics at Grand Canyon University. All speakers reflected a genuine love of their job, and the appreciation of the community at this small university.

The majority of the Mathematics department responsibilities are teaching. They usually teach more than 15 hours each semester. In this semester Professor Dawkins, the chair of Math department, is unusually teaching 19 hours. They offer courses from lower division ones like intermediate algebra and college algebra to upper division ones like complex analysis and abstract algebra. They have more than 50 students in a lower division class and around 10 students in upper one. Since they cannot offer all upper division courses every year they need to advise math majors carefully.

Research is not a main responsibility in the Math Department. But Professor Papadopol is director of the dynamical system lab and does research as well. Their service roles are typical ones, such as becoming a member of a committee and representing the university at community events, etc.

We also discussed several issues like submitting a porfolio for tenure review, sports activities, roles as a chairman, running a Math tutoring lab, subbatical, wages, and so on. One interesting thing I was told is the following: they hire only Christians, of any denomination. Because of this, they receive no state or federal funding. It means that their budget is tuition driven.

During this visit we learned a little about American history. Small universities run by churches provided a vast majority of higher learning in the early years of this country.