The Beach Is Her Classroom: How Janel Hawkins Built Sand Castle University
Everyone who has ever visited a beach has stacked a sand castle. Janel Hawkins turned the pastime into a profession — and then into a brand with nearly two million followers, a staff of seasonal sculptors, clients ranging from the NCAA to Netflix, and a Gulf Shores-based business, Sand Castle University, that teaches, competes, and sculpts its way through the year.
Hawkins describes herself as a “dune girl,” and the title fits. A long-time Gulf Shores resident, she has turned a temporary art form into a permanent career — private classes, custom sculptures, corporate team-building showdowns, and beach proposals, all built one handful of sand at a time.
From Peoria Farm Country to the Alabama Coast
Hawkins’ path to the beach began with her family’s escape from farm country in Peoria, Illinois. Her mother suffered an allergic reaction to pesticides, and after extensive medical testing, an old country doctor compared her symptoms to those of soldiers exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam — and told the family they needed to move somewhere with more airflow. Her father scouted several locations, landed in Gulf Breeze, and called home to say, “I think this is going to work.”
The family started in Pensacola, then moved across the bay to Fort Morgan for the Baldwin County school system. Hawkins, always an outside kid who hated being under a roof — “I lived in the water and on the beach. I built many a fort out of driftwood, but had never built a sand castle” — graduated early from Foley High School.
Her father, a career Navy man, was often deployed, but every year when he was stateside the two took an annual trip, with Janel responsible for all the planning and budget management. The trips bonded father and daughter and showed her most of the country — 46 states and counting — while she took online classes in psychology and business.
San Diego, and a Craigslist Ad
The pivotal trip came in 2012: father and daughter rode the train from New Orleans to San Diego and stayed near the storied Hotel del Coronado, beside a huge Navy base. There, on a California beach, Hawkins saw her first professional sand sculpture. It was an eye-opening experience — proof that sand could be a career.
Back home, she spotted a Craigslist ad for a sandcastle sculptor in Destin, Florida — “no experience necessary.” She applied, was selected from several applicants, and spent three years as an apprentice, matched with and trained by a professional sand sculptor. She had never taken an art class; her artistic education came from her mother, an artist, who exposed her to art as a child. In Destin she learned both the craft and the business, working her way into a managerial role by age 21.
Then came the week in December 2016 when, as she puts it, she blew it all up — quitting her job, cutting her lease, leaving a relationship, and dropping out of college to move back home to Gulf Shores. A month later, in January 2017, she incorporated Sand Castle University.
Building a Business in Sand
The early milestones came fast. Hawkins was commissioned to build sculptures at the NCAA Women’s Beach Volleyball National Championship in Gulf Shores, and she has sculpted at Hangout Fest in both 2023 and 2024. Netflix hired her to sculpt for the SpongeBob movie Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie — and filmed her making the sculpture. Today Sand Castle University fields seven seasonal workers from March through October, stages roughly 40 events a year, and teaches private classes year-round, with a client list heavy on repeat business.
Then there is the social media empire. Hawkins films her sculptures as they rise — and as they wash away — sharing the videos across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Sand Castle University has grown to nearly two million followers, and the audience feeds the business: kids see the videos and take them to their parents as the thing they want to do on vacation.
The Sand Castle Showdown
Corporate retreats have become a specialty, anchored by an event called the Sand Castle Showdown. Up to 40 participants split into teams that compete for points across four parts: a lesson in building a sand sculpture, a demonstration packed with information — and a pop quiz — then team design and sculpting, and finally photos and awards. The winners take home a custom trophy Hawkins designs herself.
“Each part has challenges — ‘wrenches’ — that I design specifically for each member to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses, and how to work together as a team,” she explains. “It’s not about the prettiest castle, but who best plays the game.”
Proposals, Bridesmaids and Weddings
The business’s most beloved product is also its most ephemeral: the marriage proposal. The ritual is carefully orchestrated — a groom books a beachside restaurant, Hawkins builds his sculpture in secret, and when the couple arrives a few minutes early, the maître d’ suggests a walk on the beach while the table is readied. The groom leads her to the sculpture, and pops the question. “It’s the memory of a lifetime and so much fun,” she says.
Bridesmaid trips and weddings round out the calendar, and because Hawkins’ medium is temporary by nature, every sculpture is custom-filmed for a lasting memory — often the part clients treasure most. “People ask me why I work in a temporary medium,” she says. “I like the fact that it’s extremely delicate, it’s ephemeral, with the sound of the waves in the background. It’s my happy place.”
A Classroom on the Beach
Hawkins calls herself a teacher at heart. “I was never a good student, but I just had the wrong subject. The beach is my classroom,” she says. “Sometimes I teach on the beach, and sometimes the beach teaches me.” Her staff trains intensely every year — “we only have one shot to do what we do” — balancing structure with the flexibility the coast demands. “You never know when a storm will pop up; the beach is always changing.”
The classes themselves are deliberately frictionless. Everything is private, everything is turnkey — “you don’t have to do a thing. Just show up” — and Hawkins will bring all the materials to the client, including the sand itself. A one-hour class for up to five people runs $200; custom sculptures, which take five to eight hours to construct, run about $500 depending on complexity. Classes run year-round.
How a Pandemic Built a Business
Ironically, COVID-19 was Hawkins’ breakout. With families desperate for outdoor activities they could do together, private sandcastle classes became exactly the kind of small-group experience people wanted — and in the summer of 2020, she taught five classes a day for 32 straight days from mid-June through mid-July. The surge turned a young business into an institution.
Gulf Shores Roots
Hawkins’ ties to the Alabama coast run deep. She spent summers at a camp at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab — an experience, she says, that played a big role in her appreciation of the coastal environment. She is a first-generation Southerner, raised, as she jokes, “by a bunch of Yankees,” and fully adapted: “We are all here for the same reason, we love the beach.”
Off the beach, her preferred transportation is a Harley-Davidson 883 Iron Sportster, and her soundtrack ranges across the music she grew up on. She recently bought the house she picked out at 16 — from her father, who still travels constantly but comes home to Gulf Shores, and still joins her for the annual trip. The tradition that started with Navy deployments and a train ride to San Diego continues, one destination at a time.
Sand Castle University offers private classes and custom sand sculptures year-round along the Alabama Gulf Coast, with event bookings and class information available online.