Sep 22, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min · 14 segments
Arizona’s continued growth as a technology and innovation hub depends not only on attracting new companies and investment, but also on developing the skilled workforce needed to support them. From…
Steve ZylstraHost
The tech industry believes that post-secondary institutions are critically important to their future success in producing the workforce that's required to support this growing technology economy here in Arizona.
And I think we can all agree that technology has never moved faster than it is today.
So if you could each talk about how colleges and universities can become more agile in responding to these new workforce needs while still providing students with a very strong educational foundation.
The focus of what our students actually need to be, right? So I tell everybody that we're creating graduates of excellence and character steeped in an entrepreneurial mindset.
It is the gold standard, the platinum standard, if you will, for engineering.
For technology, it's the Center of Academic Excellence designation that our United States government designates to some of these programs.
But like you said, technology is evolving way faster than the multi-year process it might take to get a new program all the way through the accreditation that you need.
So what do you do with that? At GCU, part of what we're different about, that business focus, is we have a centralized curriculum development environment.
machine basically so we can take in all of our engagements with industry when they say hey we need help here we put it into the gonculator and we can turn something out very quickly that industry helped us build that we can then bring to students in months versus years And that, I think, is a huge separator, and it allows us to really do something at scale.
Interestingly enough, we just launched a new project-based learning program.
It's one class, 16 credits, and it's students who come here to GCU and they go to work.
It's 40 hours a week, just like they're going to work, their professor, their industry involvement right there in the classroom.
These are the things that we think make our students that real cutting edge in that excellence area.
And obviously character and entrepreneurial mindset is just interwoven in what we do.
The tech industry believes that post-secondary institutions are critically important to their future success in producing the workforce that's required to support this growing technology economy here in Arizona.
And I think we can all agree that technology has never moved faster than it is today.
So if you could each talk about how colleges and universities can become more agile in responding to these new workforce needs while still providing students with a very strong educational foundation.
The focus of what our students actually need to be, right? So I tell everybody that we're creating graduates of excellence and character steeped in an entrepreneurial mindset.
It is the gold standard, the platinum standard, if you will, for engineering.
For technology, it's the Center of Academic Excellence designation that our United States government designates to some of these programs.
But like you said, technology is evolving way faster than the multi-year process it might take to get a new program all the way through the accreditation that you need.
So what do you do with that? At GCU, part of what we're different about, that business focus, is we have a centralized curriculum development environment.
machine basically so we can take in all of our engagements with industry when they say hey we need help here we put it into the gonculator and we can turn something out very quickly that industry helped us build that we can then bring to students in months versus years And that, I think, is a huge separator, and it allows us to really do something at scale.
Interestingly enough, we just launched a new project-based learning program.
It's one class, 16 credits, and it's students who come here to GCU and they go to work.
It's 40 hours a week, just like they're going to work, their professor, their industry involvement right there in the classroom.
These are the things that we think make our students that real cutting edge in that excellence area.
And obviously character and entrepreneurial mindset is just interwoven in what we do.
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