In the early 1960s, Tom Maniscalco dropped out of Rutgers University.
He says struggles with mental health and managing a punishing school schedule led to that difficult decision.
“When I started at Rutgers, I was taking, as a freshman, 21 credits — and that’s part of the problem," Maniscalco said, recalling his freshman year in 1957.
In his senior year, Maniscalco left the New Brunswick campus, knowing it would disappoint his father, who always wanted him to graduate from Rutgers.
Now, nearly 65 years later, Maniscalco is about to fulfill that wish. At 85, he is completing a Rutgers degree.
For the past six years he’s taken one course per semester toward a master’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the state university.
Maniscalco plans to cross the stage Friday during the Rutgers School of Engineering convocation at Jersey Mike’s Arena in Piscataway.
He will be Rutgers’ oldest-ever graduate in any degree program.
While it’s decades too late to celebrate with his father, Maniscalco will have his dad on his mind.
“This is my present to him now,” Maniscalco said.
Maniscalco’s love of building and engineering developed early and is closely tied to family.
“My grandfather was a carpenter, and we have a summer house on Long Island,” Maniscalco told Rutgers Today.
“We would drive out there from Garfield on weekends with him in summer 1948 and help him build the house. I was 8 at the time.”
Maniscalco re-entered Rutgers after a full career working and studying in the field he loves.
After dropping out, Maniscalco found work at the Bendix Corporation in Teterboro. He calibrated testing equipment for Saturn V rockets, which were used in the Apollo program missions to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
While at Bendix, he attended night school at New York University and was able to finish his bachelor’s degree in 1967, a decade after he started at Rutgers.
He went on to work at Kearfott Guidance & Navigation in Woodland Park, serving as a senior design and development engineer, contributing to the guidance systems that would later be used in the Space Shuttle program.
Through the years, Maniscalco received additional degrees at New Jersey Institute of Technology, eventually attaining a Doctor of Engineering degree.
He retired at 79 and began looking for something to do.
“I applied to Rutgers,” Maniscalco said.
”I kept taking one course at a time," he said. “And now I’m ready to graduate.”
After he took an in-person course at Rutgers, the pandemic forced classes to move online. Maniscalco, who lives in Garfield in Bergen County, decided to stay remote. The commute was better, he said.
Maniscalco excelled in his studies each time he went back to school after dropping out. He became a member of the Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society while at New York University and a member of Pi Mu Epsilon, a national mathematical honor society, at Rutgers.
Though he was in his 80s, Maniscalco had no trouble keeping up with assignments at Rutgers, said Marcio Fuzeto Gameiro, an associate research professor of mathematics.
“He was always the very first student to turn in the assignments,” Fuzeto Gameiro said.
Maniscalco says he plans to stay busy now that he’s done with his Rutgers master’s degree.
“My hobbies are aerodynamics, and World War II aircraft, and also Indianapolis 500 racing cars,” he said. When Mario Andretti won the Indy 500 in 1969, Maniscalco was in the stands with his brother.
He also plans to focus on his work as vice chair of the local section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
As for pursuing yet another degree as he nears his 86th birthday, Maniscalco says it may be time to end his academic career.
Though he’s been admitted into the Rutgers Mechanical Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. program, he’s not interested in taking the qualifying exams the program requires.
“I don’t think I want to go through that,” he said.
Stories by Liz Rosenberg
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Liz Rosenberg may be reached at lrosenberg@njadvancemedia.com.