By Maggie Strong
Staff Writer

When Professor Steve McVey had to make a choice of either entering into the FBI or attending school at Purdue, he chose the FBI. Now, McVey is at Purdue fulfilling his aspirations as an associate professor in the department of organizational leadership.

McVey has tenure and works full time for the Purdue School of Technology in Kokomo, Ind. He began work in 1989 for Statewide Technology in Richmond, Ind. and was then transferred to Kokomo in the spring of 1991.

"I knew when I retired from the FBI that I would like to go to a university. Leadership was a subject I had taught police officers over the years in the FBI. It just happened that Purdue needed someone in the program at Richmond and I was there teaching some classes to the Richmond Police Department," said McVey.

In Kokomo, there are about 14 classes in the bachelor program and McVey teaches three courses per semester.

"The statewide technology program is very appealing in that I teach a variety of courses," said McVey. "Although it is more demanding, it is more interesting. "

McVey dropped out of high school during the middle of his senior year because his father had contracted Tuberculosis. While working at a grocery store and still attending one English course that he needed to take to graduate from high school, McVey was informed by the Commerce teacher in his high school about opportunities in the FBI. Originally, McVey had wanted to go to Purdue and study electrical engineering. He was inspired to work in the FBI due to the possibility that he could train to be an agent and go to college while working there.

"One of the major appeals of Purdue is its broad array of academic programs and people, the rich cultural events and the fact that Purdue allegedly has the highest population of foreign students among major research universities in the United States," said McVey.

McVey left the small town where he had grown up and went to Indianapolis to apply to work for the FBI. After he was accepted, he rented a sleeping room at Woodruff Place in Indianapolis and began to work on May 14, 1956. McVey became the mail clerk and supply clerk while also being responsible for picking up confidential trash and burning the trash in a local furnace every day.

McVey left Indianapolis and spent six months on an active duty tour in the Army Reserves. He then returned to Indianapolis and resumed his activities of having a night job and attending school for the next two years. He graduated from the University of Indianapolis in 1962 with a B.A. in History and was then accepted into the Agents School. Eleven days before his 24th birthday he became a Special Agent of the FBI.

After completing training school in Washington, DC and in the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, he was assigned to work in Tampa, Fla. A month later, he was sent to St. Petersburg, Fla., to work on general criminal cases in the sub-office.

"I was now into a world of adventure — chasing bank robbers, burglars, killers, rapists, car thieves and every other type of criminal you could imagine. I was getting paid for doing something 50 million American men would have paid thousands of dollars just to get to do for one day!"

McVey was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monteray, Calif., after working in the Tampa Division for 13 months. After a year of studying the Russian language full-time, McVey was assigned to work Russian counterespionage in New York City, which he ended up doing for the next five years. He then switched to the Bank Robbery Squad and became an instructor of classes that the FBI provided to the state, county and city law officers.

"It was early on that I realized that the more I understood about the criminal mind, the more effective I was going to be. So, I began a career-long study of psychology and abnormal human behavior which has later led me into criminal personality profiling — one of the most fascinating of all the areas of my career," said McVey.

In 1972, he was transferred back to Indiana and became a part of what later became a federal criminal and vice squad. For the next 16 years, he worked on various cases such as bank robberies. He also taught many subjects at various police schools within the state.

"I became a hostage negotiator and authority on abnormal psychology and sex crimes, which eventually led me into training to become a psychological profiler of serial killers and rapists," said McVey. "This was probably the most interesting and rewarding of all assignments."

Until August of 1988 when McVey retired, he was still teaching, doing hostage negotiations and running lie detector examinations.

In 1996, McVey and his co-author, Dr. Tom Capozzoli, wrote a book, "Managing Violence in the Workplace." In 1999, they wrote another book, "Kids Killing Kids: Managing Gang Violence in Schools." McVey's experience with psychology and criminal behavior was influential upon the production of the books.

He was chosen by the School of Agriculture with five other faculty members to visit Russia during the summer of 1999 so he could meet the faculty of Novgorod State University. While he was there, he visited farms, businesses, and other commercial businesses in the new Russian economy.

Today, McVey has worked with the department head of organizational leadership and supervision, Mike Menefee, for six years. Menefee said, "Steve McVey is a very fine professor and expert in workplace and societal violence."

In the future, McVey intends to research and write two versions of a book on supervision. One will be a general version and the other version will be applicable to the supervision found in law enforcement organizations. He also wants to produce a book on the taxonomy of child sexual abusers and a book on hostage situations management and negotiations.

"Also, I wish to experiment with multimedia publishing of educational and training programs produced on CD's and/or DVD's, which I see as the medium of the future."