Thus far we have talked about the national governing bodies for social fraternities and sororities and Honor Societies.  The focus of this post will be the governing bodies for Professional Fraternities.  The Professional Fraternity Association or PFA.

The Professional Panhellenic Association, for women’s groups, was founded in 1925, and the Professional Interfraternity Conference (PIC), for men’s groups, was founded in 1928. These groups came about due to rapid growth among all types of fraternities during the late 1920s. On March 2-3, 1928, delegates from 27 professional fraternities came together inWashington, DC to organize the PIC.  The PFA resulted from the merger of the Professional Interfraternity Conference and the Professional Panhellenic Association in 1978.

The merger itself was the result of the impact of Title IX on most fraternal groups with professional affiliations. is an association of national, collegiate, professional fraternities and sororities that was formed 1978. Since PFA groups are discipline-specific, members join while pursuing graduate (law, medicine, etc.) degrees as well as undergraduate (business, engineering, etc.) degrees. PFA groups seek to develop their members professionally in addition to the social development commonly associated with general fraternities. Membership requirements of the PFA are broad enough to include groups that do not recruit new members from a single professional discipline. The PFA has welcomed service and honor fraternities as members; however, Greek letter honor societies more commonly belong to ACHS.

We’ve been giving you an overview of some of the most important National Concils that  govern Greek letter organizations.  We talked about the organizations with a social focus.  Today, we’ll turn our attention to the governing body of Honor Societies: The Association of College Honor Societies or ACHS.

The mission of the Association of College Honor Societies is to build a visibly cohesive community of national and international honor societies, individually and collaboratively exhibiting excellence in scholarship, service, programs, and governance.

The Association of College Honor Societies (ACHS), founded in 1925, is the nation’s only certifying agency for college and university honor societies. ACHS sets standards for organizational excellence and for scholastic eligibility for the various categories of membership: general, specialized, leadership, freshman, and two-year honor societies. To assure member participation in governance, honor societies must be structured on a membership basis so that the interests of individual members are advanced.

Member societies of the Association of College Honor Societies are as divergent as knowledge itself. From business to physics, mathematics to music, these organizations exist for one primary purpose: to encourage and honor superior scholarship and leadership achievement.

Stay tuned for more on National Councils!

We continued our series on National Councils this week, starting by talking about the National Multiculural Greek Council (NMGC.) Today’s focus will the National APIA Panhellenic Association (NAPA.)

The National APIA Panhellenic Association (or NAPA, formerly known as the National Asian Greek Council) is an association of collegiate fraternities and sororities. As more restructuring was taking place, the name was further changed to National Asian Pacific Islander American Panhellenic Association (NAPA) to represent a coalition governance in place of a council. Although it began  in 2005, it wasn’t formally organized until 2006,

The founding organizations officially chartered the National APIA Panhellenic Association on August 12, 2006.  Today, the charter members include:  alpha Kappa Delta Phi, Alpha Phi Gamma, Delta Kappa Delta, Delta Phi Lambda, Kappa Phi Lambda, Pi Alpha Phi, Pi Delta Psi, Sigma Beta Rho, Sigma Omicron Pi, and Sigma Psi Zeta

The purpose of the association is to create an umbrella organization that can unite Asian Fraternities and Sororities onto common causes, like the original APIA Vote campaign that served as a catalyst to beging the council.  In doing so it would also facilitate communication between the various member organizations.

Stay tuned for more about other National umbrella organizations and councils!