The Collegiate Panhellenic Council (CPC) accepted a Collegiate Panhellenic Excellence Award from the National Panhellenic Conference earlier last month.
“It was an award that took us by surprise in a humbling way but was definitely something that whenever I reflect back on all the hard work that the CPC has done over the years was well deserved,” said Tanner Marcantel, Assistant Dean and Director of Greek Affairs.
To receive this prestigious award, CPC had to meet seven out of seven criteria, including recruitment, panhellenic structure, communication with National Panhellenic Council (NPC) area advisor, judicial procedures, Panhellenic programming, academics and Panhellenic community impact and relations.
“The CPC received the Excellence Award by programming with a purpose and encouraging efforts the nine sororities already have in place. Also, we focused on leadership development,” said Caroline Freeman, CPC President.
The Collegiate Panhellenic Excellence Award shows how CPC has taken strides in the past year to do everything they can to aid and benefit the entire Tech community. Through various events and programs around campus and in the community, the CPC maintains a visible presence of outreach.
“We love partnering with other organizations on campus whether it’s sponsoring other organizations or doing a program together. We take the CPC seriously because we are one of the most visible bodies of women at Tech,” Freeman said.
The CPC hopes to use Collegiate Panhellenic Excellence Award as a standard to maintain and a platform to grow off of in future years.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re stopping here. The award is more of an encouragement leading us towards the picture of what we can be and continue to strive for,” Freeman said. “Each executive CPC member is already in the process of looking at what the community could look like five years out.”
However, this wasn’t the first time that CPC has received national awards.
“In the past our Panhellenic Council has been awarded for specific functional areas like an excellence and risk management award, but this year they were one of fourteen out of six-hundred CPCs to get an overall excellence award for their efforts,” Marcantel said.
The CPC represents all nine Tech sororities and each sorority has at least one delegate represented in the overall governing body. The CPC, however, cannot dictate what actions are taken by each sorority internally.
“There are ten unanimous agreements that all twenty-six national sororities have voted to abide by over the years so it is CPC’s role to make sure all of the local groups are abiding by those ten unanimous agreements in order to make sure the community is collaborating,” Marcantel said.
The council strives to influence women around campus in a positive way through events and programming aimed at reaching as many people as possible.
“I think our Panhellenic here at Tech is reflected with a Georgia Tech spirit of not being satisfied with the status quo and constantly looking to improve the process or performance. Now overall operations are functioning at a much better level and that’s being recognized,” Marcantel said.