The 1956-57 annual report by the president to the California Board of Education and the State Department of Education states: "The Engineering division appreciates the splendid support it has received to date from the State Board of Education and other State agencies. It is extremely difficult to keep ahead of the combined forces of increasing enrollment and technological changes. However, partial solutions have been found by temporary maneuvers and long range building developments. Examples are:
"The East wing of the Engineering Building (Bldg. 20), which will house the Electrical Engineering and Electronic Engineering departments will be ready for occupancy prior to the fall quarter."
The summer of 1957 was moving time for the two departments. The EE Department came from tolerable quarters in the west wing of Building 12, and the EL Department came from totally unacceptable quarters in the long condemned old Agriculture Education building (north of Building 02, later removed to make way for Bldg. 05). The major advantage of the new building came in the new laboratory equipment. The State of California without much foresight and logic has a policy which funds equipment and furnishings for new structures and presupposes that they shall have the same useful like expectancy as the structure. Even at that, the building and equipment funding was made in lean years, so lesser quality materials, heating and lighting equipment were specified. The equipment budget for the laboratories approached one-half million dollars. Without the cooperation of many industrial companies bidding much less than their standard educational discounts, the laboratories would have been woefully short in equipment for a quality educational experience. The State mandated twelve student stations in each laboratory room for a minimum of two students per station. The faculty felt that an appropriate loading would be eight two-student stations. Following the occupancy of the building there began a slow and surreptitious modification of the laboratories with the EE Department being the more aggressive. Reduction in class size brought the student to equipment ratio to a more tolerable level.
Twenty-eight years later, much of this "new" equipment was still being used even though it is technically very outdated, The rationalization has often been made that the student can learn manipulative skills as well using outdated and out of calibration equipment as using calibrated state-of-the-art equipment. While that may be true for a certain few circumstances and situations, the importance of student interest and motivation is being ignored.