Jerry Colangelo Appointed Special Assistant To GCU President

PHOENIX, March 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Arizona sports icon Jerry Colangelo has been retained by Grand Canyon University as a special assistant to the president, effective immediately, as the institution begins the transition to NCAA Division I athletics.

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Colangelo is the current chairman of USA Basketball and the architect of gold-medal men's basketball teams for the United States in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.  USA Basketball currently ranks number one in all five of FIBA's world ranking categories, including combined, men's, women's, boys and girls.  The Colangelo School of Sports Business at Grand Canyon bears his name, and he is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.  He is the former owner of the NBA Phoenix Suns and the MLB Arizona Diamondbacks.

"Jerry's relationships in professional and amateur sports are second to none," said Brian Mueller, Grand Canyon's president and chief executive officer. "His expertise will help us at a pivotal time in the history of our institution. He is known in the sports and business worlds as a person of great character and integrity, and we are fortunate to have his counsel available to us."

Grand Canyon accepted an invitation to join the Division I Western Athletic Conference last November and will compete in the WAC in 2013-14. The University is reclassifying from Division II, in which it won the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup for all-sports excellence in 2012.

Grand Canyon University was founded in 1949 and is Arizona's premier private Christian university. GCU is regionally accredited and emphasizes individual attention for both traditional undergraduate students and the working professional in seven colleges: the Ken Blanchard College of Business, the College of Education, the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Theology, the College of Fine Arts and Production, and the College of Doctoral Studies. GCU offers traditional programs on its growing campus, as well as online bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs.  The University's curriculum fuses academic and clinical rigor with Christian values to prepare its students to be skilled, caring professionals. For more information about GCU, visit www.gcu.edu.

SOURCE Grand Canyon University