Old Engineering Celebrates Its Centennial

Today, the courtyard and steps of the building known affectionately as “Old Engineering” are where students do last-minute studying and chat about their Design Day projects. Over the last 101 years, the University of Arizona landmark has also been the site of rowdy St. Patrick’s Day rituals, wild animal invasions and the beginnings of lifelong love stories.

Old Engineering has been with the college through 14 deans, including new leader David Hahn, the growth from five majors to 15, and even the addition of air conditioning. It is home to the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, as well as biomedical engineering and the Academic Affairs Office. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Alumnus and SIE professor Larry Head, who just finished his term as interim dean of the college, came to the university as an undergraduate in 1979 and joined the faculty after he finished his PhD in 1989. The department moved into Old Engineering in 1984 while he was still in graduate school, and Head spent that summer relocating partitions from the Civil Engineering Building to the new space.

A few decades later, some uninvited guests moved in, too.

Just before Thanksgiving break in 2012, one of Head’s doctoral students told him he’d been working late the night before when a raccoon had terrified him by dropping out of the ceiling.

Building administrator Mia Schnaible knew there had been squirrels in Old Engineering before, so she called in the incident as a squirrel invasion. Meanwhile, Head returned to the building several times a day over Thanksgiving break to make sure his lab equipment wasn’t being damaged by critters. No damage, but he did find some evidence in the form of a trail of paw prints through his office. And a local animal capture team did indeed find a ring-tailed cat, a member of the raccoon family known for climbing trees, cacti and the walls of Old Engineering.