Members of the Southern Miss Interfraternity Council (IFC) traveled to the Southeastern Interfraternity Conference in Atlanta, Ga. Feb. 20-23 and took home several awards.

The Interfraternity Council is a governing council for the 10 affiliated fraternities on campus.

“We attended SEIFC, the Southeastern Interfraternity Council’s yearly conference,” said Daniel Paul, IFC president and member of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity. “Over 600 people from various schools across the country attended this year.”

“As far as awards, we received five in total,” Paul said. “These included Excellence in Outstanding Publications, Excellence in Single Publication, Excellence in Outstanding Educational Programming, Excellence in Academic Achievement and lastly we were selected as one of just seven schools to receive the Fraternal Excellence Award.”

Gardner Hewes, vice president of event planning for IFC and member of Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity, attended the conference along with other officers from the Southern Miss IFC council.

“The Fraternal Excellence Award is the highest award given out at the conference,” Hewes said. “It shows that everything we have been working on has results and makes an impact on Greek Life at Southern Miss.”

Hewes helps plan all of the events IFC puts on every year, including recruitment. “I help with any event that has the IFC name, but my main event is Greek Week. That and recruitment events for all of Greek life are my main focuses,” Hewes said.

Paul said he and the other IFC representatives participated in seminars and were able to participate in a community service project as part of the conference.

“We attended seminars and listened to various speakers at the conference. We were constantly taking in information from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day,” Paul said.

“We attended a service event where we created fraternities with children from ‘CHRIS Kids,’ a charity that houses and develops youth who have suffered from mental or physical abuse,” Paul said. “It was a great experience and good chance to give a piece of our fraternity experience to an amazing group of kids.”

Paul attributes Southern Miss’ IFC success to the efforts of not only the 2014 IFC board, but to the past year’s leadership.

“Last year’s IFC executive board did a great job of putting us in a position to succeed. Thanks to their efforts and our hard work and new ideas we were able to come away with five awards,” Paul said.

IFC received an award in the publication category for their recruitment booklet that highlights each chapter’s strong points and for creating a resource that provides scholarship opportunities.

IFC also was recognized for their efforts in educational programming for partnering with career services to host an IFC career night and for holding a GPA that is higher than the average for Greek men.

“It’s a great feeling, but we return hungry and driven to continue to improve our IFC, our Greek community and the entire (university),” Paul said.