Jennifer Pierce, who oversees the Panhellenic Council as an assistant director in the Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life, has received the 2017 Outstanding Panhellenic Advisor Award from the National Panhellenic Conference.
The award is presented to a campus-based professional with at least five years of experience working with a college Panhellenic organization.
Pierce has been at UT since 2014.
The university’s fraternity and sorority community consists of 40 organizations and 4,000-plus community members; the Panhellenic Council is made up of 13 women’s sororities.
Pierce also serves as a member of the board of directors for the Association of Fraternity and Sorority Advisors Foundation.
Committed to developing philanthropic endeavors, Pierce advocated for the adoption of the Circle of Sisterhood Foundation as a Panhellenic Council project. Circle of Sisterhood serves as a way for sorority women to stand together across affiliation, age, color, and creed to make a difference in the lives of millions of girls and women around the world.
Working with Circle of Sisterhood, Pierce supported the Panhellenic community in implementing a UT fundraiser benefiting a school build committed to educating girls in Haiti. She traveled to Malawi, Africa, with some of the university’s sorority members to help a group of sorority women break ground on a school, and she will travel with another group in June 2018 to break ground on a second school in Senegal, that was financed by the philanthropic efforts of UT’s Panhellenic community.
Pierce said the best part of her job is getting to watch the university’s student leaders grow as individuals and as leaders within their organizations.
“I love being able to empower them to create change and challenging them to move our sorority and fraternity community forward,” she said. “When students have passion and feel empowered to lead their organizations in a positive way, our fraternities and sororities can be one of the best learning and leadership development experiences available.”
With the guidance of Pierce, the Panhellenic Council has received several awards over the past few years. This year, the council was recognized with the Achievement in Membership Recruitment award from the Association of Fraternal Values and Leadership. In 2016, the council won the Excellence Award from the National Panhellenic Conference and the Breakthrough Award from the Association of Fraternal Values and Leadership.
In addition to numerous awards, the sororities within the council continue to see a growth in membership. Panhellenic Council membership has increased by 18 percent since 2014.