SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

On the Drawing Board: At a celebration marking the 25th anniversary of UC Irvine School of Engineering last week, Dean William Sirignano spelled out how the school hopes to produce more engineering graduates to feed Orange County’s growing technology industry.

Sirignano told industry people and department members that he hopes that the school will add full-time faculty members, going from the present 71 to 125 or 150 by the year 2001. Student enrollment is also expected to double, he said, although the school hopes to reduce the ratio of students per faculty member.

Construction of a second engineering building is scheduled to begin this summer, at a cost of $34 million, and the school could possibly expand to encompass a total of five buildings within two decades, he said.

In the near term, the school will be adding a biochemical engineering graduate program and a chemical engineering undergraduate program within the next three years. It also will add classes to serve the aerospace and computer engineering communities.