The fan of the century, face of the university

Having touched the lives of thousands of students, attending more than 75 years of Coyote sporting events and working with the Alumni Association for 15 years, it’s safe to say Nancy McCahren is USD’s number one fan.

“I don’t think you will find anyone who is more enthusiastic, more passionate and more on board with the Coyotes than Nancy McCahren. She has so much energy and is just so excited about seeing women succeed,” said Dawn Plitzuweit, Coyote women’s basketball head coach.

A family affair

McCahren’s whole life has revolved around the University of South Dakota.

“I was a child of the university. I started coming here when my father was the athletic director of the university, Carl B. Hoy,” McCahren said. “My father’s whole life was spent with the University of South Dakota and now as it turns out my whole life has, too.”

McCahren’s father came to USD in 1915, graduating in 1919. He then came back to coach basketball, football and track in 1927. She’s been attending Coyote sporting events since she was four years old. Both of McCarhren’s brothers attended USD, as well as both of her children.

She started her freshman year at USD in the fall of 1953.

“My husband and I met here at the U and he was an English major, as I was, and then he did a graduate program in Spanish and I did a graduate program in French and then he started law school,” she said. “After living away from Vermillion we moved back to Vermillion… then we’ve been in Vermillion ever since we came back in 1962. You can count those years up however you want and I have been going to the games ever since.”

McCahren was very involved when she attended USD. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, Miss Dakota and a number of other student organizations. She also studied in France on a Fulbright scholarship.

When the McCahrens came back to Vermillion, both Nancy and her husband, Mick, took teaching jobs with the university.

“I didn’t ever want to leave the university,” she said. “This is a very special place.”

A passion for students

Thousands of students have passed through McCahren’s classes in the English Department and the Department of Modern Languages.

Even President Jim Abbott took advanced composition with McCahren when he was as a student at USD.

“She was an absolutely top drawer advanced composition teacher. I credit her for all kinds of things. I really learned how to write in her class. I wasn’t a bad writer, but she made me a significantly better writer,” Abbott said. “I remember on one of my first papers she wrote, ‘You write fairly well but you’re intellectually lazy.’ I probably did way better than I would have in law school because I could write well.”

Jeremy Hoeck, assistant sports editor at the Yankton Press and Dakotan, was one of McCahren’s last students.

“What comes to mind thinking back was how positive she was, because as you can imagine there were certain people who hadn’t read as far as we should and Nancy was always so incredibly positive. And we would discuss the characters in the plot and Nancy was just so engaging and fun to listen to because she had such a unique perspective,” Hoeck said. “It was obvious to us sitting in the class that she had been doing this for a long time and knew the stories so well.”

Hoeck also touched on how McCahren’s teaching style has been valuable in his career and that he still sees her often at Coyote sporting events.

“I would imagine you could ask any athlete or coach that has come through in the past decade, she is by far the most supportive person you’ll ever know,” he said. “Even in what I do she is just incredibly supportive.”

This was evident even in a nearly-deserted Sanford Coyote Sports Center, when every person she came across promptly gave her a hug and asked how she was doing.

McCahren said staying involved with students even after retiring has been important to her.

“I just kept in touch with the student part of life because that’s where the life is, is the students,” she said. “That’s where the excitement is. That’s where you learn to grow and that’s where you learn to do the things that help to make you a better person and I just felt a real calling to teaching and working with young people.”

The face of the university

While teaching, McCahren also took on many advising roles. She advised USD’s chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, international students, inter-fraternity council and eventually became the overall Greek life advisor. She’s also been a huge advocate for women at USD.

“There weren’t many women who could be called mentors or leaders on this campus, it was a pretty male-dominated place,” she said. “I think the rise of the women has been one of the things that I have been mostly interested in and proud of because for a long time we were not of equal importance, and to some today we still may not be.”

McCahren thinks women are a very important part of USD’s success.

“The women have made a real impact on the life of this university,” McCahren said.

In 1999, McCahren became the director of the Alumni Association, where she would remain until her retirement in 2004.

“I loved teaching when I became alumni director I said to Betty Asher, I will only do that if I can keep my tenure professorship so that if I want to go back into the classroom I can do it,” McCahren said about accepting her position with the Alumni Association. “But I also loved reconnecting for the next 15 years with the students that I had known when I was a child and an adult and maybe had been their teacher and hadn’t seen them.”

Abbott worked with McCahren during her time at the Alumni Association.

“She’s just like the conscience of the university,” he said. “She really endeared a lot of loyal alumni, because they were her friends because she was so enthusiastic and had so much belief in the university.”

McCahren is still in contact with a lot of those friends, still meeting her Theta sisters for lunch and connecting with people at university events.

“There is a connection, there is a pride. But it’s not a pompous pride, it’s a pride that said I am so lucky to have gone to the University of South Dakota,” she said. “I really believe in this school.”

Abbott said he has always seen McCahren as one thing, the face of the university.

“I always just saw her as the face of the university,” he said. “That’s what I saw as a student and that’s what I saw when I came back as president.”