PHOENIX — Brian Mueller zips across Grand Canyon’s campus in a golf cart, waving to students who greet the university’s president by his first name.
At nearly every turn, he drives past a structure under construction: a 170,000 square-foot engineering building, a state-of-the-art soccer stadium, residence halls, an office complex for 1,500 employees.
This was Mueller’s vision when he arrived at the private university in the heart of Phoenix eight years ago. He has helped make it a reality by using the university’s for-profit funding model to push the men’s basketball program toward Division I status with help from the iconic local basketball figures Jerry Colangelo and Dan Majerle.