NORTHRIDGE : CSUN Gets Funds to Expand Department

Cal State Northridge will receive $9.8 million in state funds to expand its engineering department, officials said Thursday.

CSUN is one of nine Cal State campuses to benefit from a recent issue of state bonds that netted $100 million for the university system.

The proceeds will be used to finance construction and renovation projects at the nine campuses, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown’s office said Wednesday. The bonds were sold to a group of investors led by Grigsby Branford & Co., an African-American firm based in San Francisco.

Virtually all bond sales held to generate funds for public agencies are handled by the state treasurer’s office, said Michael Reese, a spokesman in Sacramento.

At Northridge, the money will be used to convert a computer center in the engineering department into a lab facility and a self-help computer center, said Richard Leffingwell, a financial adviser in the CSU chancellor’s office.

The conversion will open 53,000 square feet of classroom and lab space for more than 2,100 students, said Jennifer Openshaw, a spokeswoman in the treasurer’s Los Angeles office.

In addition to the classroom space, the money would be used to build 40 faculty offices in the engineering department and fund an asbestos-removal project. Construction is scheduled to be completed by February, Openshaw said.

Cal State universities in Chico, Fullerton, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Hayward, Pomona and Sacramento also will receive a portion of the funds from the bond sale.

San Francisco State University, which has more than 30,000 students on its 90-acre campus, will receive the largest portion, about $22.7 million, for the construction of a multistory humanities building to replace the old facility, which received substantial structural damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.