When Wagner Hall was built in 1949, Harry Truman was president, the novel 1984 had just been published, and Perry Como and Fats Domino were at the top of the charts.
The School of Engineering is using the same building to house many of its faculty offices and laboratories 55 years later.
On Election Day, a general obligation bond for education, bond B, which proposes more than $94 million for higher education throughout New Mexico, will be on the ballot.
If the bond is approved, UNM will receive $17 million to make improvements on the main campus. Ten million dollars will go to the Health Sciences Center and $3 million will fund building renovations on campus.
The remainder of the money, $4 million, will go toward the construction of a Centennial Engineering Center that will replace Wagner and Tapy Hall, which were built in 1954.
Tapy Hall houses the administrative offices of the Department of Civil Engineering and many of its classrooms. Tim Ward, department chair, said Tapy Hall is just as outdated as Wagner Hall and lacks the space and facilities for the growing department. He said construction of the Centennial Engineering Center has been in the works for more than 10 years.
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With additional funding from the Legislature - up to $17 million - Ward said construction could begin in 2005.
The remaining $200,000 will be given to the Manufacturing Training and Technology Center, part of UNM's manufacturing engineering program.
Tamara Williams, marketing representative for the School of Engineering, said construction is planned in two phases, with the first one scheduled to take down Tapy Hall, followed by the removal of Wagner Hall.
Craig Sinabaugh, a mechanical engineering student, said he plans on voting for bond B even though he will have graduated by the time the construction is finished.
"It is important for the University to be able to attract students to UNM," he said. "Someone who comes here and sees a building that is falling apart is probably not going to come here. It's hard enough to get students to come here from out of state."
Julia Coonrod, an associate professor in the civil engineering department, said besides classrooms, the building would provide new labs better designed to fit the needs of the department.
"Our building itself is not important once students get here and get to know our faculty and our students," she said. "A new facility would give students something to be excited about."
Cost of the 139,500 square-foot center is estimated at $30 million. The center will be a home for continuing work on New Mexico water arsenic removal, Rio Grande Bosque restoration and cancer research. It would also house administrative offices and student programs and services.
"We're currently working in another era," Ward said. "The new building will take us into the 21st century."
