Grand Canyon University to open law school teaching biblical 'foundation for Western civilization'
One of the largest Christian universities in the United States is opening two new schools, including a law school that the university’s president says is part of an effort to ensure students understand the biblical underpinnings of Western civilization and the law.
Grand Canyon University (GCU) in Phoenix, Arizona, which expects to have a record 141,000 students during the upcoming academic year, has announced plans on Wednesday to open a College of Law and a College of Construction and Industrial Technologies.
“For the College of Law, we have a building ready to go. And so they will be moving in there as early as a year from now in the fall,” GCU President Brian Mueller told The Christian Post in an interview.
The GCU College of Law, which seeks to "integrate the Christian worldview throughout its curriculum," aims to welcome its first students in fall 2027 or spring 2028. The opening depends on approval from the Arizona Supreme Court, the Higher Learning Commission and the Arizona Board for Private Postsecondary Education. The American Bar Association (ABA) will review the new school once its first students graduate.
Mueller said GCU is motivated to open a law school to help students realize that they must understand Scripture if they seek to understand the laws that underpin Western civilization.
“We were partly motivated by the fact that to understand Western civilization, to understand American culture and to understand the law that’s part of that, you really have to understand the Old and New Testament because that is where the foundation for Western civilization lies," he said. "It’s where the foundation for our legal system came from.”
“There’s a lot of universities that aren’t teaching that foundational aspect to what has created probably the most flourishing society in the history of the world,” he added. “We’re very ... determined to make that a big part of coming to law school at GCU. ... You will get a firm foundation in the Old and New Testaments, and those being foundational to understanding Western civilization and the legal system that we have.”
Mueller is optimistic about winning the approvals needed to open the law school.
“The Arizona Supreme Court is really behind this," he told CP. "There’s a shortage of attorneys in the Southwest and in Arizona especially. So they were very, very excited about us doing this and they have thrown their full support behind it."
Mueller said the university is familiar with the review process by the Arizona Board for Private Postsecondary Education and the Higher Learning Commission.
“We’ve got over 400 academic programs now that have gone through those different processes, and this one will go through the same way that the others have gone," he added. “We don’t anticipate any difficulties with that.”
GCU has been working for the past year to launch the law school, and one of the next steps is to hire a dean, Mueller said.
“The curriculum is all written, and I am actively interviewing deans," he explained.
While the College of Law is an entirely new endeavor, the College of Construction and Industrial Technologies is a rebranding and expansion of existing programs.
“We’ve been working through a thing called the Center for Workforce Development because we were getting our feet wet in producing certificate-level, baccalaureate certificate-level people for the construction and industrial technologies industry. And very honestly, it went faster and better than we thought,” Mueller said.
“So we just ... took the concept and renamed it the College of Construction and Industrial Technology,” he added.
The Center for Workforce Development, which will be known as the College of Construction and Industrial Technologies going forward, was established three years ago, Mueller said. He called the concept unique among private universities.
"The way the state looks at education, the state universities do bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs and the community colleges do more vocational technical programs. This is probably the first example of a private university that does both," the president said. "Our major part of the university is to produce bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral students. But there was such a need for this that ... nobody was scaling it, that we just decided to get involved, especially because we’re in Arizona.”
Mueller said Arizona is "booming" in construction and advanced manufacturing.
“And somebody needed to put together programs that could help young people a little bit more quickly than earning a bachelor’s degree, get certified and get into an industry and start building a career,” he said. “So we decided to do that as well as ... bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral students.”
GCU already offers apprenticeships and bachelor’s degrees in the College of Construction and Industrial Technologies, and it plans to add graduate degrees.
“We do have master’s degrees in technology and engineering,” Mueller said. “We don’t have anything in construction or advanced manufacturing yet. And so that’s in the planning stages.”
The apprenticeship programs are a way for students eligible for Pell Grants “to graduate with a certificate that leads them right into a job without accumulating any debt," Mueller stated.
"[It's] a huge deal, especially for kids that come from inner-city neighborhoods and from socioeconomic situations where it’s just not realistic to spend four years in college and accumulate that level of debt given their family situation," he said.
“A hundred percent so far of the students that we’ve graduated have stepped right into a job. And being able to step into a job without any debt is a huge blessing to young people, especially that come from lower socioeconomic situations,” he said.
Because the program is so popular, Mueller said the university will need additional on-campus facilities.
“We have a huge building for Industrial Technologies and Construction, but we’re almost out of space already. ... We’re going to have to build additional buildings for that program. It’s going to grow very rapidly.”
While GCU is known for offering classes in person and online, Mueller said the new colleges will be primarily, if not exclusively, in person.
