Creighton University’s School of Pharmacy hosted their Mr. Pharmacy pageant on Jan. 28 for male students enrolled in the pharmacy program.
The Mr. Pharmacy competition is essentially a beauty pageant for first, second and third year male pharmacy students. This year, seven students competed for the title of Mr. Pharmacy as well as four other awards. These participants were Tim Ivers, Ryan McCoy, Nicholas Williams, Jeffery Schutzbach, Taylor MacKinnon, Jimmy Hu, and Ruhan Phillip. These seven students could receive awards for Mr. Pharmacy, first runner up, second runner up, Mr. Popularity and Mr. Congeniality.
Before receiving an award the students must compete in a number of categories. These categories are hobby wear, talent, calculations, empathy statements and question and answer.
The winner of this year’s Mr. Pharmacy was Tim Ivers. Ivers said that it was great to spend the time practicing with other pharmacy students – university fellows who he would have never met otherwise.
“It was an awesome experience,” Ivers said. “It was a lot of work, but still a lot of fun.”
Ruhan Phillip was the First Runner Up, and Ryan McCoy was the Second Runner Up. Mr. Popularity is based on money donated during the week leading up to the event. The money raised goes to a charity chosen by the winner of this award. This year’s Mr. Popularity was Nicholas Williams. The contestants voted on which one of them should get the Mr. Congeniality award, and this year the award went to Taylor MacKinnon.
Kaitlin Crowley, a first year Pharmacy student, helped make sure this event was a success and she plans to help future pageants.
“There is a lot of work put into this, and the end result is pretty impressive,” Crowley said. “It was fun and a good experience.”
This is an annual competition, and Jamie Ravenscraft, a second year Pharmacy student and fundraising chair of the American Pharmacist Association – Academy of Student Pharmacists – Creighton chapter, hopes to develop the competition more in the coming years.
“Next year we hope to bring a bunch of other programs in,” Ravenscraft said. “It could be an all health professions competition.”