First-Year Design Students Prepare for Fifth Annual CANstruction Event

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Last year's Leadership by Design class in the Fay Jones School of Architecture collected more than 3,800 canned and packaged food items for the 2010 CANstruction event.

First-year students in the Leadership by Design class in the Fay Jones School of Architecture are busy preparing for the fifth annual CANstruction event, to be held at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, on the plaza in front of the Arkansas Union.

The 150 first-year architecture, interior design and landscape architecture students will construct sculptures from canned and packaged food they’ve collected. They can begin building their structures as early as 10:30 a.m. Prizes, awarded for most cans used, best overall design and best use of labels, will be announced at 1:15 p.m.

The students will donate the food to the University of Arkansas Full Circle Campus Food Pantry.

The event is the service project for the Leadership by Design class, which prepares students in the design programs of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture for the rigorous and time-consuming education. First-year students are grouped with upper-level mentors for the semester-long course to address issues of time and stress management, strategies for balancing school and life, and opportunities to get to know others within the design disciplines.

The service project began five years ago when Judy Brittenum, associate professor of landscape architecture, wanted the students to participate in something fun and design oriented while also serving the community. After some research, Brittenum and her colleague in the course, Laura Terry, associate professor of architecture, discovered the CANstruction project was a national charity event sponsored by the Society for Design Administration.

“This is our fifth annual event, and we are hoping this will inspire more organizations to get involved in the future so this event could be campus wide,” Terry said.

While this student event is much smaller in scale than the national event, due to the limited construction time, the students have been prolific in acquiring donations. Two years ago, the class donated more than 4,000 canned and packaged food items to the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank, and they collected more than 3,800 items last year for the Cooperative Emergency Outreach. In the last four years, Fay Jones School students have collected and donated more than 10,000 food items.

Though the student teams are competing for awards and prizes, the real winners are those who receive the food. “Hunger is a growing problem in our community. Students often receive support through scholarships, loans and grants to help with tuition, but this is an opportunity for our students to fill the gap and help with a very basic need,” Terry said.

Judges for this year’s event are David Lewis, owner of BHK Kafé and a landscape architecture alumnus; Denise Garner, founder of Feed Fayetteville, a local organization dedicated to alleviating hunger in the community; Jennifer Webb, associate professor of interior design; and Judy Brittenum, associate professor of landscape architecture.