C. Vivian Stringer  

After leading small college Cheney State to the NCAA championship game in 1982, she became a hot coaching prospect. Iowa was able to convince her to leave after the 1983 season. She coached at Iowa 12 seasons from 1983 to 1995, where she compiled a record of 269–84 (.762) overall, and 169–45 (.790) in the Big Ten. She led the Hawks to the 1993 NCAA Final Four and twice to the Elite Eight. She also won or tied for 6 Big Ten titles.

She built a program that helped elevate women’s basketball to a whole new level at Iowa. When she arrived, the Hawkeyes had won just seven games the season before her arrival and were ranked 299 out of 302 teams nationally in attendance. She brought excitement and winning to the program, and helped coordinate and break the NCAA women's basketball attendance record with 22,157 on February 3, 1985 in a game against Ohio State.

She left Iowa for Rutgers, which was closer to where she grew up. She continued her winning ways, leading them to the Final Four, becoming the first coach to lead 3 different schools to the Final Four.

In 2006, she was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame.

Nike unveiled the C. Vivian Stringer Child Development Center in September 9, 2008. She is the third woman, the second coach, and the first African-American woman to have a building named after her on Nike's campus.

She was inducted to the 2009 Hall of Fame class with Michael Jordan, John Stockton, David Robinson and long-time Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan.

On October 19, 2022, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights announced the renaming of the court inside the basketball stadium in Piscataway, NJ in honor of her. She was also named a 2024 Naismith Outstanding Contributors to Basketball Award Winner, and was recognized during the Iowa-Rutgers women's basketball game on Jan 5th, 2024.