UT Arlington College of Engineering
UT Arlington

Civil Engineering Student Returns to Studies
After Tours in Afghanistan

University of Texas at Arlington senior Enrique Baez-Torres is hitting the books again after a five-year interruption in his quest for a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. During those five years, he spent time in Central America and Afghanistan improving the local infrastructure.

Enrique enlisted in the Army Reserves in 1996 as a way to help finance his college studies, which he began in 1999. He was called to active duty in January of 2002 and assigned to Fort Sill, Oklahoma training homeland security personnel. After two years there, he was reassigned to a construction outfit in Honduras, where he became a quality assurance inspector on community-improvement projects such as roads, schools and water facilities.

His enthusiastic and productive performance impressed his superiors; as a result, he was offered, and he accepted, a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant. His commission and his civil engineering studies led to his being assigned to the Corps of Engineers branch and enrolled in the engineering officers’ basic course. Six months later, he was in Afghanistan.

Enrique was a contracting engineer, managing civilian contractors reconstructing the war-torn country. Their projects were roads, clinics, power plants, bridges, water treatment facilities – anything that had been destroyed or made unusable during the almost continuous conflicts that had taken place there since the Soviet invasion in 1978.

He returned home for a three-month break before returning for a second tour. “The challenges were too great for me to stay away,” he recalled. “Challenges are what keep me going.”

Enrique said his most interesting project during his second tour was the reconstruction of a road linking three major towns in the Uruzgan province north of Kandahar, a stronghold for both the Taliban and local warlords. “We had to be airlifted to the place,” Enrique said. “Insurgents made it almost impossible to get there in a reasonable time and safe condition.”

The road’s route covered 215 kilometers, about 134 miles. Before construction began, it was no more than a wide goat trail. Enrique decided to drive the length of the route and back to get a better idea of the scale and scope of the project; it took him 14 hours.

“The job was contracted as a two-lane, asphalt roadway with a total cost of around $60 million. But, because of insurgent attacks, expenses ballooned and the Corps had to settle for a compacted gravel surface. Construction has been going on for a year and a half; it still wasn’t complete when I left in November.”

Now that he’s returned to the College of Engineering, Enrique hopes to complete his degree in another two semesters. “I’ll probably return to the Corps of Engineers as a civilian. It’s a challenging environment, especially in an overseas situation. And the Corps has offices in interesting places.”