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A record-breaking gift will help transform the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Some will look back on the summer of 2004 as the time when the Olympics returned to Athens. Others will remember the presidential race between John Kerry and George Bush.

For Bob Dryden (pictured at left with Fariborz Maseeh) it will forever be the time when the cranes and trucks arrived, the hammers began swinging, and the College of Engineering and Computer Science took another giant leap into the future.

Dryden, dean of the college, has been dreaming of this since the late '90s, when he took on an ambitious expansion plan for the college. The expansion means more labs, more students, and an ever-stronger relationship with Oregon's high-tech community. And in the most tangible sense, it means construction of a signature building in the Northwest Center for Engineering, Science and Technology.

Dryden's dream received the financial equivalent of a booster rocket in March when Fariborz Maseeh (see related story, PSU Made All the Difference), 45, a PSU graduate who went on to establish a high-tech company in Massachusetts, presented the college with $8 million, the largest gift in Portland State's history.

Of the $8 million, $6 million will support construction of the new building and continued renovation of engineering's current facilities. One million dollars will establish two professorships, one to be known as the Maseeh Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the other in an area of emerging technology.

The remaining $1 million will be split between five student fellowships and the endowment of a fund honoring the founding dean of the college, H. Chik M. Erzurumlu.

The college itself and an auditorium within the Northwest Center will be named for Maseeh.

The new building has long been the cornerstone of the college's expansion plans. It will nearly triple available space, including a near doubling of lab facilitiesÑa continuation of a push by the college that began in the past decade. The Integrated Circuits Design and Test Laboratory was built in 2000Ñwith financial backing by Credence SystemsÑto test circuits for clients remotely through Internet2.

It was the only one of its kind in the nation at the time. The college built the Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab to help government agencies make traffic flow faster, smoother, and more safely. In 2000 it opened the Chemical Mechanical Planarization LaboratoryÑthe only one of its kind outside the East CoastÑto develop new kinds of wafer polishing technologies. It also built a Cybersecurity Laboratory to study secure mobile networks and computer and telecommunication security issues. The federal government's National Security Agency designated it a "Center of Academic Excellence."

The labs are as important to private companies and government agencies as they are to students and faculty. A group of about 50 local companies meet at the cybersecurity lab on a regular basis to discuss security issues that affect their industries. Transportation lab researchers collaborate with the Oregon Department of Transportation, the city of Portland, Tri-Met, county governments, state and local police, Washington agencies, and 911 responders.

Perhaps the tightest link between the college and industry is the Integrated Circuits Design and Test Lab. The initial collaboration with Credence Systems has evolved into a relationship with LSI Logic, one of Credence's largest customers.

In 2003, PSU moved beyond just working with outside companies and entered into a direct business relationship with Octavian Scientific, Inc., a semiconductor equipment start-up. The company is housed in the Fourth Avenue Building, where employees have access to faculty and the integrated circuits lab. PSU receives stock in Octavian in exchange for rights to technologies that the company develops.

"By having Octavian with us, our people can walk down the hall and talk to people who have 40 years' experience in circuit testing," Dryden says.

Soon, the space adjacent to Octavian will be renovated, allowing Octavian to bring in integrated circuit process robotsÑat about $1 million apieceÑ which students will have access to.

Students, of course, are the biggest reason the college is expanding. The Oregon Legislature, spurred by the state's high-tech industries, passed a bill in 1997 directing the state's university system to double the number of engineering graduates within 10 years. At that time, the college had 1,200 students, Dryden says. Enrollment now stands at about 2,000, and Dryden is shooting for 2,500.

Although the state's economy has cooled since the high-tech gold rush of the late '90s, the need to produce more engineers is just as great, he says. It allows companies to recruit locally, keeping their costs down, and giving them greater opportunities for growth.

With more students will come more faculty and more research money. The college had 44 faculty members in 1995, when Dryden became dean. It how has 63, and he plans to push it to 100. His goal is to expand annual research funding to $17 million per yearÑup from the $1 million per year when he started at the University in 1995.

Plans also call for filling in the last remaining gaps in the college's degree offerings. Dryden wants to secure a Ph.D. program in engineering and technology management, and another in mechanical engineering. The first will happen this fall; the second a year from now. When this process is complete, all programs within the college will offer master's and doctoral degrees. Reaching the goal will earn more national recognition, which in turn will help both enrollment and research funding in a kind of symbiotic spiral of growth.

None of these things would be possible without a University-wide vision of what the college could be. Fortunately, a PSU graduate with the means to make things happen caught the same vision.

John Kirkland, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the articles "Paying for Prisons" and "Is It Live, or Is It? . . ." in the winter 2004 PSU Magazine.