On Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, the Office of Student Involvement, IWU College Panhellenic and IWU Interfraternity Council hosted the Fraternity and Sorority Life Academic Achievement Night to honor members of Greek organizations who maintained a GPA of 3.5 or above and made the Dean’s List during the Fall 2025 semester. Over 200 students from 10 organizations qualified for recognition.
Dean Karla Carney-Hall opened the ceremony with a speech about the value of hard work. Carney-Hall said thereare three things that go into this academic recognition: talent, work ethic and personal standards.
“You could decide you don’t care. You could decide that grades don’t matter. You could decide that this is not how you want your life to be measured. But you don’t. You make a choice to say, ‘This matters to me. This is part of my standard of who I want to be and what kinds of things I want to achieve,’” Carney-Hall said.
Dean Karla also shared a personal anecdote about the importance of perseverance and hard work despite a perceived lack of payoff. “My son had a hard fall semester and said, ‘Hard work doesn’t matter.’ And people pushed back and said, ‘Hard work always matters. But hard work doesn’t always equal success.’ Hard work doesn’t always equal the success you think you’re owed or have earned,” she said.
Dean Karla also stated that fraternity and sorority members have a higher GPA on average than non-Greek-affiliated students and brought the conversation back to personal standards.
“So you have to ask yourself, why does a GPA matter if hard work isn’t always the recipe for success? That’s where your personal commitment to your standards comes in. It’s about the character that you bring. It’s about saying, ‘Even if I don’t get the grade I want, or the position I want, the hard work matters because it’s who I am,” she said.
Dean Karla also expressed the importance of one’s community as a foundation for their academic potential. She said that individual character is a core value in the fraternity and sorority community.
Closing out, she also referenced the expression ‘Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.’ “Look around, folks. This is your future. These are the people that are creating the standard of excellence that you need to commit to the future that you want. You are the future. You are the ones who will put this liberal arts education to work and solve the world’s biggest problems.”
