Sr. Clement Eagan
Sr Clement Eagan, CCVI, Academic Dean
She was a native Texan from Ballinger, Texas who earned her BA from Incarnate Word College and, like her colleague Sister Columkille, became a classical languages scholar. She taught and published many text translations from Latin, but she is best remembered for her forty-year plus tenure as Academic Dean. Sister Clement was the academic power behind additions to the curriculum, accreditation, and acceptance into learned societies. She was called The Wonder.
Sister Clement updated the College history first done by Sister Helena Finck, CCVI and did so under the pen name “a member of the Congregation.” When she retired from the active deanship until her complete retirement in the 1970s she was working on another updated history, a work later completed in two volumes by Sister Margaret Patrice Slattery, CCVI. Sister Clement was known for encouraging faculty and students alike to pursue advanced degrees and her encouragement, like everything else, was persistent with found applications for fellowships and assistantships to follow.
She was determined to secure a Phi Beta Kappa chapter for the College and never stopped applying. Finally she was told that some colleges had been on the waiting list since before the Civil War. And we still are.
Sister proposed the first school colors of red and grey, encouraged and supported student literary efforts before and after graduation, and guided the expansion to a coeducational graduate program in 1950. In 1969 the residence Clement Hall was named in her honor. At the time of her death, at age 94, Sister remained a loyal Cowboys fan. Whenever they lost she took ownership: “I just didn’t pray hard enough!.”
This is our heritage. Making a Difference.