C. Edward Mc Vaney - Education

Education

Because of dyslexia McVaney had difficulties in school and was a very poor student. When he was in fourth grade and took an eye test, he could barely see the chart. Since his father was a graduate of Kearny College and a dentist, it was expected that he would attend college himself. Accordingly, he attended a Jesuit elementary prep school, where, because of his dyslexia, he soon found himself thirtieth out of thirty-six students. Even in high school, he could barely read and struggled just to keep up because of his dyslexia. While reading was an issue, McVaney's cognitive skills were not at all impaired. In fact, by his sophomore year in high school he found out that in Geometry, he was the top student in his school—the whole school—and in his senior year he was the top student in Physics. While reading would remain an issue because of his dyslexia, it was clear that he was a gifted student in an all college-prep high school. Graduating from high school, Creighton Prep School in 1959, McVaney went to Iowa State Teacher's College (now the University of Northern Iowa) on a football scholarship. He was on the dean’s list and graduated with honors in 1964 with a BS in mechanical engineering. In his senior year in engineering school, he took two courses in computers; one in operations research, and another in advanced dynamics, some kind of mathematics class, and, in his own words, "absolutely freaked out on computers," explaining that "that was the end of my engineering career and the beginning of my computer career," as there was no such thing as a Computer Science program at that time in Omaha. Discovered making "free calls" with little wire device to his girl friend, Carole, in Lincoln, Nebraska, McVaney lost his football scholarship and left Iowa State Teacher’s College. He returned to Creighton Prep School for a semester-and-a-half, and then attended the University of Nebraska. McVaney married Carole in 1963

For post-graduate training, McVaney attended Rutgers University because its tuition was only about $100 a semester and, at that time, made no distinction between out-of-state and in-state tuition. McVaney and his wife lived in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. He commuted to Rutgers which was located in Newark, New Jersey. Upon his graduation from Rutgers, McVaney was hired by Western Electric as an operations research engineer.