As we near the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, we look forward to spending cherished time with family, reunions with dearest friends, and anticipate all that is to come in the new year. While all these things are good and should be celebrated, we are also presented an opportunity to look back at all that has transpired over the past year and use those memories as a catalyst of anticipation to an even better 2023.
2022 provided us with a rekindled sense of normalcy, or a full return to our “new normal”. For much of our school, and our community, 2022 gave us hope that as we emerge from the events of the past three years, that there are brighter days in store. Together, we’ll take a look at some of our highlights from this past year and celebrate all that God has done at NCU.
Launch of Esports
In 2022, North Central University officially launched it varsity eSports program in partnership with Elevation Church. North Central is one of the first universities, as well as the only school in the Twin Cities to feature a varsity eSports program. Our eSports program allows for students to participate in a varsity sport, receive coaching, and even scholarships while working towards a college degree. We have also launched a brand-new eSports arena that features 25 gaming desktops with Ryzen R9 5900x processors, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards, and 32GB of RAM. Plus, synchronous 10 GigE wired internet. We can’t wait to see what is in store for eSports at NCU!
Record Breaking Partners for Progress Gala
In October, we also celebrated another Partners for Progress fundraising Gala. Each year, this event highlights a time for our community to come together and celebrate all that God is doing through the NCU family. This year’s event displayed record breaking levels of generosity as we raised over $688,000. All the money given goes directly to scholarships for students at NCU. Check out a quick recap video from an amazing night at the Depot here:
NCU Block Party
As we welcomed back to students for another amazing year, we celebrated with a successful NCU block party with games, food, music, and time to build our community together. Check out a recap video:
TJ Jones Library Remodel
This year, we also completed a full renovation of the TJ Jones Library. The goal of the renovations was to restore the library to its original beauty as well as create more space for students to study, and more add space for even more volumes of literature. You can read more about the library remodel with this post for our blog.
Next Gen Innovation Summit
Another first of its kind event took place on campus this fall as we presented the first rendition of the Next Gen Innovation Summit. This day was filled with many wonderful speakers and leaders from around the country, with an emphasis on how we could better reach the next generation with technology. One of our speakers was Jon Rush, who is the Youth Pastor at the Elevation Church Ballantyne Campus. He shared with the summit, as well as our students during chapel. Check out his message from that day!
With an amazing 2022 in the books, we can now begin to look towards all that is in store for us in 2023. After seeing all the good that has transpired this past year, how could we not be filled with anticipation for all that is ahead in 2023? Here’s to a faith filled and exciting year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
