Washington -- California State University at Hayward wants to lead the first wave of American universities helping Iraq as part of a government program aimed at rejuvenating the American-occupied country's higher education system.

The East Bay university has entered the bidding for part of a one-year U.S. Agency for International Development contract valued at up to $30 million. USAID, which is in a hurry to start the program, plans to award one-year contracts to three to six universities, probably of $3 million to $5 million each.

Bidding in Washington closed Friday, the 100th day since the official end of the Iraq war. While interest among universities was high, USAID said, privacy rules prevent it from saying how many universities or consortiums of schools entered bids.

"We want to get this up and running as soon as possible," said USAID spokesman Luke Zahner. A decision on the applications could come in a week or two.

Cal State Hayward, a school of 13,000 students with campuses in Hayward and Concord, has proposed a four-part program for jump-starting Iraqi universities in Baghdad, the southern Iraqi city of Basra and the northern city of Irbil. Almost no faculty from Hayward would go to Iraq. Instead, computer links and scholarships for Iraqis to study in California form the core of the $5.8 million grant application.

The university, which has extensive international programs, wants to establish management centers at three universities to help in curriculum development and student and academic affairs. Sixty-five undergraduate students, 75 graduate students and 32 Iraqi faculty would be brought to California for exchange programs within the vast Cal State system. CSU campuses in San Luis Obispo, Fresno and San Diego are joining the program.

Summer institutes in Hayward would be established for 40 Iraqis on building social work programs and improving government administration. In the program's second phase, American academics would go to Iraq to help teach and train faculty and university administrators.

One factor that Cal State Hayward hopes might give it a leg up in winning an Iraq contract is that its student body has the largest number of Muslim students of any of CSU's 23 campuses. It has also enlisted the support of East Bay House members Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, and Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek.

"We're trying to empower Iraqis to get back control over their higher education system," said James Kelly, Cal State Hayward's associate vice president for continuing and international education.

Kelly has worked with a small group of Iraqi Americans, some of whom have traveled to Iraq to scope out universities' needs since Saddam Hussein's government fell in March. He said, "The Iraqi Americans I've been working with who've gone over think this is the right model.

"It's a multiple approach that looks at all the various levels of what's needed in Iraqi higher education," Kelly added.

USAID's purposes are to foster intellectual diversity and prepare young people for jobs in a country where Hussein's Baathist dictatorship long stifled dissent.

"Iraq had at one time a very exalted position in the Middle East in terms of its higher education, its social institutions, its economy, that has eroded over the last couple of decades," USAID Assistant Director Wendy Chamberlain told officials from universities interested in the bidding earlier this summer.

"There's no reason why it can't reclaim its position."

Kelly said that while Cal State Hayward's initial proposal covers only one year, the university views its entire package as a three-year plan that would be expanded to include course work in criminal justice and business and a master's degree program in online education.