Mae Nakatani, the first woman ever to earn an engineering degree from the University of Hawai`i graduated in 1950. She, with 52 male classmates, constituted the largest class in engineering up to that time. On 1 October 1951 the civil engineering curriculum was accredited by the Engineers' Council for Professional Development. In a period of only four years the University graduated as many engineers as it had graduated in the previous forty years. Moreover, what had been regarded as a peak of engineering graduates turned out to be no more than a brief plateau before the trend turned upward again. For a year or two an artificial limitation was imposed on freshman engineering enrollment, but fortunately this idea was short-lived. Statehood, air travel, a new engineering faculty of bright young men, and national accreditation of the engineering curriculum broke down inherent insularity and engineering education in Hawai`i became an integral part of engineering education in the United States. Some Hawai`i engineering graduates went to mainland colleges for post graduate work. Mainland organizations sent recruiting teams to Hawai`i to hire graduating seniors, and what had threatened to be a surplus of engineers quickly turned into a shortage.

Increasing engineering enrollment made it desirable to broaden the engineering program. In 1953 the Hawaiian Electric and the Westinghouse Electric companies gave the University the equipment for a heat power laboratory. This made it possible to increase course offering in the mechanical engineering field and enabled the University to offer a curriculum in General Engineering in addition to Civil Engineering. Further expansion of the engineering program had to be deferred because of very limited University budgets.

The academic year ending in 1953 was the first post war year that the Engineering Department and the Mathematics Department were separated administratively. The expenditure of the University that year, for practically everything except self-supporting auxiliary enterprise, totaled $4,095,030. Engineering's share of this was approximately $52,990 for personal services, $938 for supplies and $506 for equipment. A low expenditure for equipment in any one year, however, could be misleading. The legislature appropriated funds on a biennial basis. If the purchase of an expensive item of equipment, such as a surveying instrument or an attachment for the Olsen testing machine, was budgeted the expenditure would be deferred until the last quarter of the biennium. This unbalanced the equipment expenditures between years but provided ready money which could be used to cover expenses which might be incurred by an unexpected casualty early in the biennium.

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