"My bachelor's degree was in civil engineering," Altaf says, "and I had thought I would become a structural engineer." When he entered a competition and won a scholarship to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, though, his focus changed. He left his hometown of Hala-located in Sindh, a southern province of Pakistan-and traveled to Thailand.

"At that time [in the '70s], environmental issues were just becoming 'sexy,'" he says, laughing, "and I chose to pursue my master's degree in environmental engineering." But his education broadened his horizons in other ways as well.

"The Asian Institute of Technology had quite an international character," Altaf says. "Faculty, staff, and students were mostly from countries in Asia, but others came from the U.S., Australia, Europe, and Africa. It was a great opportunity to study and live in a multicultural, international environment."

By that time, Altaf was already involved in political activism. "You could probably call me a '60s activist," he says with a smile, "but I wasn't like a hippie. In the early '70s, there was a crisis in Bangladesh, which used to be part of Pakistan. I opposed the military action and oppression in Bangladesh, and for that I had to undergo quite a lot of hardship." Students recognized his abilities and elected Altaf information officer of the student government.

Altaf's studies next brought him to the United States.

"The president of the Asian Institute of Technology was an American," Altaf says, "formerly dean of the school of engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. After I got to know him, he recommended that, given my grades and background, I pursue a doctoral program, and he encouraged me to apply to the University of Pittsburgh. I did, and I was accepted."

So Altaf came to Pennsylvania. He met his wife-who, he says, "just happens to be from the same part of the world that I am"-in Erie, and they might have returned to their homeland together. But by the time he completed his doctoral studies in environmental systems engineering, political concerns intruded once again.

"When I came to the United States, Pakistan had a democratic government," Altaf says. Then General Mohammed Ziaul-Haq staged a coup d'etat, making it unsafe for Altaf to return.

"One thing led to another," Altaf says. "My two sons were born here [in the United States], and I began working for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources." He also worked as an environmental consultant, and eventually moved to Virginia. After starting a small environmental consulting business, he learned of a part-time position that was open at UMUC. Altaf realized that it would fit perfectly with his consulting duties, and he came to College Park in 1997. He has since become a full-time UMUC employee and significantly scaled back his business.

Altaf says he particularly enjoys living near Washington, D.C., with its cultural and political resources. He works with organizations like the Center for Victims of Torture and the Human Rights Alliance, and serves on the advisory panel of the World Sindhi Institute (WSI). Last year, he and his brother, Khalid Zaman, worked with WSI in producing Shah-Jo-Raag, a compact disk showcasing traditional Sindhi Sufi music.

Somehow he has also found time to "dabble" in writing fiction and poetry in his mother tongue, to read every published word Hemingway has written, and to reread Tolstoy's War and Peace "two or three times."

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