Eric Jay Toll

If the dream of sending a manned mission to Mars comes to fruition, and rockets and astronauts arrive in orbit around the Red Planet, they will need fuel to transport them in the lander to the surface. Right now, the only options are inefficient, requiring more fuel and less payload.
If Grand Canyon University mechanical engineering professor Li Tan and his student scholars succeed, their research, under the umbrella of the university's Canyon Emerging Scholars undergraduate research program,...

A 1774 William Cooper poem that goes, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,” has been paraphrased over time to "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
It's something Dawn Seekings in New York state knows well. She never expected to find the mysterious message on her laptop screen one night early in 2025. Recently widowed, she was browsing aimlessly until her despair called for a break.
“I said a prayer, ‘God, listen, you’ve got to give me something to do,’” Seekings said. “I wa...

Against the black night, the darker-than-night silhouettes of Monument Valley buttes graced the horizon. Overhead, stars were scattered across the sky—a prank by Coyote, according to Navajo legend—and the stripe of Milky Way stars arced brilliantly across the sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon.
It was a cold night in northeastern Arizona on the Colorado Plateau, and our group of photographers huddled deeper in our jackets with cameras ready. I kept checking the time on my phone. ...

“It’s like the phone rang and you answered it,” Becky de Tranaltes said when describing the nursing profession and the passion she has for it.
De Tranaltes, part of the nursing faculty for the prelicensure bachelor of science in nursing program at Grand Canyon University, said that it’s not easy to teach someone to look at nursing as something that comes from deeper inside a person, she said.
“It’s not like dad saying, ‘take over the family business,’ or something like that. Students are draw...

It was a well-trekked sandy trail leading us into the thick brush. A gentle breeze rustled the shrubs and straggling mesquite and ironwood trees. In an instant on the short track, we seemed to leave the Sonoran Desert behind and move into a stunted but lush preserve.
Two of us were camping for a long weekend at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, along the Arizona-Sonora, Mexico border at Lukeville, ...

It seemed like a small thing – calming a patient.
But Kiyavanna Robinson, an Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing student at the Grand Canyon University ABSN site in St. Louis, discovered that it's those little things that mean a lot.
She was assigned to assist a middle-aged patient who had a lumbar puncture scheduled that day. Robinson saw how nervous that patient was and went beyond the usual preprocedure assessment.
“I wanted to know what happened to her and why she was in for the pr...

My bucket list trip to experience winter in Québec was made even more memorable by the excursion to Saguenay.

A winter visit to Québec has long been on my bucket list. It seems pretty offbeat to leave Arizona in February and land not far from the Arctic Circle. The trip to Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean was an unexpected detour from Carnaval in Québec Citie. Bundling up meant I was never cold despite an air temperature that never cleared 12F (-11C). The Québecoise are exceptionally welcoming hosts. ...

The answer to the unasked question is that commercial real estate development is not the right name. Lynn McKee, director of the Masters of Science in Commercial Real Estate program at Georgia State University, makes that observation.
“Commercial real estate is mislabeled,” he said. “It always has been because when people hear (CRE), they think of office buildings and shopping centers; it really should be called ‘income-producing real estate.’”
McKee says that virtually all real estate develo...

When you think of patient care, you generally don't think of peppermint and lavender. Could peppermint and lavender really make a difference, for example, in easing patient stress? It's something Liezl Moscaya looked into as part of her practicum quality improvement project for her master's degree in nursing.
Trained in the Philippines as a nurse, Moscaya came to the United States, and in 2008, she joined Veterans Administration Healthcare in her home state of Connecticut. Four years later, s...

It’s entering another world of language, history and amazement. It’s a lifetime experience for the first-time visitor. Come along and explore the best way to spend 7 days in Paris.
Here are some travel tips for planning your Paris one-week itinerary. There are some essential tips, ideas and common French phrases at the end of the article.
Paris Itinerary Day 1: We’re Here, Now What?
When arriving in Paris for the first time, it’s exhilarating. I was tingling with excitement. It’s so new and y...

Photos by Ralph Freso
In a matter of minutes, the dance studio on the first floor of Grand Canyon University's Saguaro Hall went from serene to hustle and bustle as it filled with the sound of students.
They were eager to see returning friends, meet incoming dance majors, and once again stretch creativity through Christian-worldview dance during the College of Arts and Media's Welcome Week open dance sessions.
“We’ve been doing this for years, but this is the first time we are on the (Welcome...

A Sedona girls weekend can be a lot of things — active, relaxing, insightful — or just a way to take a step back and reconnect.
What did Hayley Ringle and her friend choose?
“Relaxing,” Hayley says. Laughing, her friend Alicja Wierzchowska agrees. The pair saw Sedona, Arizona, as a perfect girls’ getaway idea.
Gathering friends and heading to Sedona is the way to experience Arizona red rock country at the tip of the Verde Valley and the toe of the Colorado Plateau. It’s a land of food, crysta...

For Dr. David Mulkey, nursing is more than a career – more than a calling, even.
The Grand Canyon University associate professor takes his teaching philosophy one step further.
Nursing, he said, is a ministry.
"It is a unique position that we are in as nurses to care for patients at their most vulnerable state – when they need health care. ... It's a really vulnerable time for (the patients). And so, teaching nursing as a ministry and calling really impacts how we care for our patients.”
That...

Photos by Ralph Freso / GCU News
One day, Grand Canyon University nursing student Alyssa Parinas was just “doing her job.” At HonorHealth Deer Valley Medical Center, Norterra Phoenix, she was making rounds with her nursing supervisor when a patient needed a little extra care.
“I didn't see myself doing anything special,” Parinas said. “I guess, to her, it made an impact. She was really grateful for me and my (supervising) nurse."
That “thank you” set the wheels in motion, and Parinas found he...

Grand Canyon University online graduate student Paige Ott believed her role in life was to ensure that adopted children landed in safe, loving homes.
She was an adopted child, and from an early age, her parents were upfront about it and explained the process to her.
“They made it very grand to be adopted,” she said from her home on a steaming, humid afternoon in Nebraska. “They made me understand that it was not about the store dropping you off on the fence post.”
From a term paper assignment...