The Intercollegiate Association of Women Students is the national organization that oversees AWS chapters. The IAWS provides guidance to AWS chapters through a national contact and Regional conventions held every year. The IAWS exists “essentially to perform a service to its member schools.” (Losey). The structure of the IAWS was composed to officers from the various chapters of AWS.

The IAWS was interested in ways that the organization could help women students achieve the best college experience from their university. At many of the regional conventions and through correspondence surveys throughout the year, the IAWS asked questions like:

“Why are you in college? Why do women go to college? To prepare for a career? To become better wives and mothers? To spend some time harmlessly before marriage? To meet interesting men? To become better informed? To develop a liberal mind, an intellectual ability?...” (Losey).

These were common questions for women college students because they faced the expectation of managing the home after graduation. The IAWS wanted AWS chapters to accept that women college students had varied interests in attending universities whether it was for skills for the home or for a career. It was the responsibility of the AWS to help women college students to enjoy and make the most of their college experience for whichever path they might choose post-graduation. 

The AWS chapter at the University of Nebraska became an official member of the IAWS in 1924.