Unlike many kids who find it difficult to see the silver lining in a cloudy day, Sergio Franco remembers loving the rains. Franco was born to parents who were sharecroppers, growing up during World War II in a small village in Northern Italy. His family had no money for toys, lest it took away from food that could be served at supper. So Franco used his ingenuity.

After a day of rain, he would play barefoot in the muddy roads, manipulating the troughs and tracks left by cars. He made rivers and dams, diversions and waterfalls. Using nature’s building blocks, Franco made his own fun. With no way of knowing it at the time, he also was performing the fundamentals of electrical engineering. Circuits and electrons, he says, are not much different from water and mud channels.

That creative vision was the spark that pushed this farmer’s son to finish high school, continue his education at the University of Rome and at the University of Illinois, where he would get his doctorate in electrical engineering, and eventually lead him to SF State's School of Engineering.

This Italian engineer in his early 60s is not one of the hundreds of alumni and current students who have sent letters to President Robert Corrigan and other administrators protesting the possible elimination of the School of Engineering in an effort to close a $12 million budget gap.

He’s not one of the scores of former students, many of whom are minorities, who share stories of commuting six hours a day to attend SF State’s engineering program because other institutions nearby carried price tags that were not an option. But many of those alumni wouldn’t be where they are professionally today, if not for Franco and nearly two-dozen like him.

Franco is one of 20-some professors teaching at the School of Engineering who could potentially lose their jobs if the possible closure of the 45-year-old school is made a reality. For Franco, who’s been teaching electrical engineering here since in 1980, that means seeing 23 years of his life’s work wiped away.

“I’m close to early retirement,” he admitted. “So perhaps it would not damage me from a practical point of view. But it would certainly wound me in terms of psychologically. Like the all the work I’ve done here over 23 years is going down the drain. … It could scar people.”

Like other colleagues, Franco has had the benefit of seeing the department grow over time from a one-major, generalized program to a school offering specialized and highly marketable undergraduate and graduate engineering degrees.

“There is a passion that goes into making a circuit work. I’ve been trying to convey this passion to my students.”

At 61, Professor V.V. Krishnan has been teaching in the engineering department before many of the SF State’s student body was even born. Since 1974, Krishnan has ferried students through the laws of physics as they apply to the intersection of mechanics and electrical engineering. He was here as the department was first accredited in the mid-1970s by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology, ensuring its superior quality. Krishnan, like Franco, is proud of the contribution he’s made during his tenure here.

“You feel like you’re really accomplishing something here,” he said. “The students may not be the best educated when they come here, but they’re hard working, very committed. And when they finish with the program they’re just as good as anybody else in their industry. That’s the biggest reward in teaching.”

Krishnan, who was raised in India and came to the United States in 1965 to attend college at UC Berkeley, says for the first time in 40 years he’s found himself doing something he hasn’t done since his days back at Berkeley: He’s become an activist again.

“It’s a different kind of activism,” admitted Krishnan, who, with the rest of the engineering faculty, has already spent countless hours strategizing ways to save the program. “I don’t see this as political, this is social. And that’s one of the reasons I came here. It was seen as much more political active than Berkeley. When people protest here, it means something to them.”

To the program’s current 600-plus students, many who come from lower socio-economic levels, it could mean not being able to realize their dreams.

Sharing a similar working class background, Franco appreciates what the opportunity has meant to students over the years. SF State’s engineering program not only provides an affordable, quality education, it opens the door to a profession some still view as a noble pursuit and a ticket out their economic situation. And Franco is proud to have made a contribution to those students’ aspirations.

“If you talk to a white blue collar worker and say, ‘what is your dream for your kids?’ Many will say, ‘I want my son or daughter to be a doctor or a lawyer,’” Franco explained. “If you ask a Hispanic or Filipino, ‘what do you want your son or daughter to be?’ They will say to be an engineer or a doctor. … There is still a respect for the engineer.”

On the other end of the faculty spectrum in terms of tenure is assistant professor Michael Holden. This is his first year teaching in the engineering department. While the program’s possible closure will wound veterans like Franco and Krishnan, who might have to watch years of investment be wiped away, it also will be difficult for new tenure-track faculty, who imagined an equally long and productive future teaching here.

“Everybody told me the first year is the hardest because everything is so new,” said Holden, 32. “I was perfectly willing to work the late nights to work out the teaching material. Now if I can’t reuse the material…”

He continued, “But really the biggest impact is on the students. The faculty here are all highly trained profession who can go find other opportunities. The great part about this job is that we care about the students.”

SF State is sandwiched between UC Berkeley and Stanford, both of which have national and internationally recognized engineering programs. But they also are the type of high-profile schools where a professor’s performance is tied to how much research money he or she brings to the university, SF State professors say. Often times, this results in a professor’s priorities lying more in research and less in imparting knowledge to the fresh crop of curious students. Teacher Assistants are often the presence in classrooms.

Holden, who earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, said the focus on student/faculty relationships and smaller classes at SF State’s School of Engineering was one of the biggest draws in teaching here.

While professors here are still encouraged to do research, he said, “you’re also expected to be a good teacher, it’s not just an interruption to other things you’re doing. I haven’t found any reason why I wouldn’t want to work here for the next 30 years.”

Most disappointing, said Holden and other faculty, is the cost to what drew them to the academic atmosphere in the first place: It’s supposed to be above the reactionary layoffs and slash burning that is common place in the industry sector.

There is also a camaraderie among professors and students that is created by having such a small program. There’s an intimacy one isn’t likely to get at large, prominent universities. This above all else becomes clear as Franco shares the story about one former student who wrote in. The student moved here from India and lived with his brother in Santa Rosa because he couldn’t afford a place of his own. For four years this student rode the bus six hours a day to attend the engineering program.

“Do you know what he said in the letter,” Franco asked, fighting back tears. “‘That was time very well spent, that was time well spent.’”

It’s not just about the laws of gravity and thermodynamics, the engineering program is also about the people who inhabit it.