Phi Delta Chi Builds Can Castles to Benefit Food Bank

Pharmacy fraternity holds annual competition to earn canned food donations for the Maryland Food Bank

By Katie Ferguson
January 3, 2011

Throughout the month of November students, faculty, and staff at the School of Pharmacy collected food and donated money for pharmacy fraternity Phi Delta Chi’s Fourth Annual Can Castle Competition.

School of Pharmacy alumni Nikki Zane and Adam Waldron first introduced the idea of the competition as students after a canned food drive had a poor showing the year prior. Throughout the last few years the competition has grown tremendously, and Phi Delta Chi and the University of Maryland, Baltimore collectively have consistently donated more than 1,000 pounds of food each year to the Maryland Food Bank.

Each class within the School of Pharmacy had a box located in the atrium of Pharmacy Hall which they could use to collect cans throughout the month. Faculty collected cans as well and could choose to which class they wanted to donate the cans. Students in each class year also collected money to be used to purchase cans and other non-perishable food items. The competition ended on December 3 when members of each class came together to determine the design for their castles. Throughout the day, numerous students spent several hours carefully constructing the castles out of the cans and boxed goods that were donated.

Creativity is highly encouraged and could be seen in the Class of 2013 as they constructed a football stadium complete with teams, coaches, referees, cheerleaders, a scoreboard, goalposts and even a line of fans waiting to get in. The Class of 2014 made a strong last minute effort collecting donations to pull together a structurally sound and carefully engineered castle complete with a flowing river of ramen. The Class of 2012, inspired by the movie Tangled, recreated Rapunzel’s Tower.

Castles were judged based on the number of cans collected, creativity, structural stability, and appropriate use of props and structural tools. Judges included faculty members Raymond Love, PharmD, Cynthia Boyle, PharmD, Ken Bauer, PharmD, PhD, and Robert Michocki, PharmD. The Class of 2012 came out on top and received $100 from Phi Delta Chi to be used for their upcoming class trip to Florida.

This year, the goal was to collect 1,500 pounds of food. The Can Castle Competition collected 1,992 pounds of food for the Maryland Food Bank to help local families in need.