Nancy Vogel Papers

Nancy Vogel received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Bachelor of Science in Education–Language Arts from the University of Kansas in 1963 and her Master of Arts in English in 1965. She began working as an Instructor of English at Fort Hays Kansas State College in 1965. From 1968 to 1970, she returned to KU to complete her doctoral studies. In 1971, she earned a PhD in Education from the University of Kansas. She returned to Fort Hays State in 1971 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Professor of English in 1977.

Vogel's early research focused on the connection between the poet Robert Frost and the painter Andrew Wyeth. She conducted research on Wyeth at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Adeline, KS, and later served on the Eisenhower Centennial Committee. She published Robert Frost, Teacher with Phi Delta Kappa in 1974, the same year the fraternity opened to women. Vogel was the first woman to be published by Phi Delta Kappa. She remained involved in the Fort Hays State University chapter of Phi Delta Kappa.

Vogel was a scholar of Maureen Daly, author of the 1942 novel Seventeenth Summer, one of the earliest young adult novels. In 1989, Vogel brought Daly to Fort Hays State for the Fall English Workshop, where Daly delivered a lecture at the Hays Public Library. Throughout the 1990s, Vogel researched Daly's life and writing while developing a manuscript for a proposed reference book on Maureen Daly. Vogel conducted research on Daly's childhood in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, studied Daly's papers at the University of Oregon Libraries, and interviewed Daly at her home in Palm Desert, California. Vogel and Daly maintained correspondence until Daly's death in 2006.

During the 1990s, Vogel started the Young Reader's Conference, which brought third through fifth graders to the Fort Hays State University campus to meet authors from around the United States. This conference was aimed at encouraging students to become lifelong readers. Vogel's publications during her tenure at Fort Hays State included "Set Theory: A Paradigm Pertinent to English Education" in English Education (1973) and "The Semicentennial of Seventeenth Summer: Maureen Daly’s Acts of Love" in the Nebraska English Journal (1992). In 1995, Nancy Vogel won the President's Distinguished Scholar's Award at Fort Hays State University. She retired in May 2000.