UK Panhellenic Receives Excellence, Achievement Award

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 6, 2014) — The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), a premier advocacy organization for women and the sorority experience, recently announced that it has awarded College Panhellenics at 32 universities, including the University of Kentucky, with excellence and achievement awards.

UK's Panhellenic has won more NPC awards than any other collegian Panhellenic in the nation. UK has 13 National Panhellenic Conference sororities on campus with more than 3,300 members.

"I am very proud of the success of our Panhellenic women," said Susan West, director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs for the University of Kentucky Division of Student Affairs. "They do a wonderful job of working together to achieve their common goals. The sorority community had grown significantly in the past few years, but the council has been able to meet their growing needs."

Just before the noon kickoff of Saturday's UK-Georgia football game in Commonwealth Stadium, Julie Johnson, National Panhellenic Conference panhellenic chairman, will present the award to Victoria Hackbarth, Panhellenic president; Chelsea St. Clair, Panhellenic president-elect; Courtney Johnson, Panhellenic vice-president of recruitment; and Susan West.

"We are honored to have been selected for the National Excellence Award from the NPC for the second year in a row," said Hackbarth, a senior member of Alpha Phi. The Louisville native is progressing toward a B.B.A. in marketing and a B.A.S. in merchandising   "As one of 11 campuses chosen out of over 670, we couldn't be more proud of our Panhellenic women for all of their hard work and dedication to make the UK Greek community the best it can be."

A College Panhellenic is a collective group of all the sororities on campus that are members of NPC. This group collaborates to provide governance, execute the recruitment process and offer programming for the sorority community on each campus.

For the second year, NPC has recognized student-managed College Panhellenics with awards of excellence and achievement. UK and 10 other universities received Excellence Awards, meeting all seven criteria. The 21 Achievement Award recipients met five or six out of the seven criteria. The seven areas of criteria are:

• Recruitment

• Panhellenic structure

• Communication with NPC area advisor

• Judicial procedures

• Panhellenic programming

• Academics

• Panhellenic community impact and relations

“Our high-performing College Panhellenics are an integral component of the entire fraternity and sorority community across the globe,” said Julie Johnson, Panhellenics Committee chairman for NPC. “It is an honor to work alongside these bright women who represent what it means to be a thriving sorority woman in today’s world.”

Recipients of the Excellence Award for 2014 are UK, College of William and Mary, Georgia Institute of Technology, Indiana State University, Mississippi State University, Texas Christian University, University of California - Los Angeles, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Oklahoma, University of South Carolina and University of Southern Mississippi.

NPC is one of the oldest and largest women’s membership organizations representing women at more than 660 campuses throughout the U.S. and Canada, and in more than 3,500 alumnae associations worldwide. NPC, one of the largest organizations advocating for women, is the umbrella group for 26 national and international sororities. NPC sororities are located on more than 672 campuses with 353,345 undergraduate members in 3,184 chapters. Alumnae are represented in 3,773 associations throughout the world. For more information, including a complete list of NPC sororities, visit https://www.npcwomen.org/ or find NPC on Twitter and Facebook.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gail Hairston, 859-257-3302, gail.hairston@uky.edu