While Penn State students are gearing up for the 1994 Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon next month, college students as far away as Texas are also getting psyched about the events in White Building.

Representatives from universities interested in starting their own dance marathons will visit Penn State Feb. 18-20 to see the marathon for themselves.

University of Florida's Panhellenic Council President Susan Kennedy and a representative from their Interfraternity Council are among those traveling to Happy Valley.

"It's hard to get the feel of it from a video or a handbook," Kennedy said. She said plans are in the preliminary discussion stages about the possibility of hosting their own dance marathon. Kennedy said Shands Hospital of Gainesville, Fla., approached the University of Florida's IFC and PHC.

Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, Texas, which has already set Feb. 24-25, 1995, for its dance marathon, will also send two representatives to Penn State.

"The reason that IFC and Panhel is organizing it is that we have a strong influence. We have a very strong Greek system," said Geoff Wayne, IFC delegate from Texas Tech. He and a PHC representative will visit and take home ideas to improve their philanthropy, which will also benefit the Children's Miracle Network.

Although Greek students are organizing it, Wayne hopes to involve all 350 registered student organizations in the future.

"We want to get it eventually where it is a Texas Tech thing, not just an IFC/Panhel thing," Wayne said.

For Penn State students, a dance marathon may not seem like a new thing, but down in the Panhandle it is.

"Not any of the schools in Texas do anything like it," said Chris Wallace, graduate adviser of Greek affairs at Texas Tech.

After visiting the dance marathon three years ago, Indiana University began its own dance marathon, said Amy Carroll, 1993 Indiana University dance marathon council president.

"We owe everything to Penn State for our inspiration," Carroll said. "We took the Penn State model and took it to fit our campus."

Carroll said although Indiana patterned its 36-hour dance marathon after Penn State's, there are some differences. The Indiana dance marathon council is its own student organization, made up of Greek and non-Greek students, and dancers are not coupled and may dance in groups of two or more.

But the biggest difference is that all the money raised goes to the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Carroll said.

"We're pretty much established now," she said. "We're trying to break away and start our own traditions now." In the first year, Indiana raised $11,000 and this past October raised $66,000.

Tracy Varnum, public relations chairwoman for Penn State's marathon, said this year's theme, "Growing Stronger Together," was chosen by the overall committee after visiting the University's Hershey Medical Center and seeing how the money previously raised has benefited the children's wing, called "Marathon Street."

"Someone said we're growing stronger, and then we looked at how Hershey and the marathon have grown," Varnum said. Last year, Penn State's Dance Marathon raised $1,336,173.59.