HAYWARD -- The U.S. Army has a problem -- it doesn't have enough Arabic-speaking translators in its ranks.

With the country on the precipice of a massive rebuilding effort in Iraq, the paucity of Arabic-speaking soldiers poses quite a quandary for the military. The Army, however, has a plan.

Cal State Hayward is among 14 colleges selected by the Army to develop a marketing plan to promote the Arabic Linguist Program, which was formed to enhance the recruitment of Arabic-speaking citizens from the age of 18 to 40 to serve in the Army Reserve.

The Army will provide$1,000 to the university and community college with the best marketing and promotions plans.

The colleges competing for the donation are in regions of the country with high concentrations of Arabic-speaking residents. Cal State Hayward is the lone four-year college from California chosen to participate. The other California schools are all community colleges: Palomar College in Marcos, about 30 miles north of San Diego, Los Angeles City College and Los Angeles Harbor College.

"For the rebuilding effort, I think this is a great program," said Todd Blaschka, a Cal State Hayward professor whose class is participating. "It's great to have a real project and really be able to measure results."

The 44 students in Blaschka's upper-division marketing promotions class are working in partnership with Orinda-based EdVenture Partners and the U.S. Army to help develop their marketing and promotions strategy.

The goal of the class is to produce a winning campaign while targeting 150 potential candidates willing to serve as translators.

"This project is great, because unlike many other school projects, this gives us real-life situations and scenarios," said Stephen Theall, a business advertising major at Cal State Hayward. "At the same time, there is added pressure to perform because this project isn't about a grade, but (it) could actually be used by the U.S. Army."

Using a $2,500 budget funded by EdVenture Partners, students in Blaschka's class have formed an actual advertising agency, called Diverse Minds. The class has been parceled into five departments: research, direct marketing, public relations, advertising and budget.

For the next month, the class will work feverishly on the project, which Blaschka said will provide an experience that should help when students move into the business world upon graduation.

"The students really see this as having a direct impact on society, with what they're doing to support the military," Blaschka said. "These guys (the students) are doing an outstanding job."

Earlene Cruz, a senior who is a member of marketing team, said, "I think it helps out the Army a lot. For us, it helps us gain more experience working with people in the agency environment as well as working in this community."

At first, students were hesitant to participate. They were concerned about how their efforts to assist the Army would be interpreted.

"We're not recruiting," said Jodee Schwan, a junior. "All we're doing is we're trying to get leads together. We have a list of qualifications. The person should be willing to sign up for up to an eight-year period.

"They go through a condensed version of boot camp, and then they're on-call for four years."

Erika Francis, a senior who is heading the research department, said students gained a greater appreciation for the project as students began to brainstorm and develop marketing and promotional ideas.

"There still are a lot of people who are not for it," Francis said. "Once we got into it, it was like 'wow, this is much bigger than we thought.'"

Some of the other schools selected for the project include New York University, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois and Loyola University. Those and the other schools will be tough to beat, because Cal State Hayward is the only school in the program on a 10-week quarter system. The other schools are on the semester system and have more time to refine their project.

But Blaschka, whose class will make its final presentation on March 15, likes the students' chances.

"We're under a time constraint," he said. "But with this class's energy, we're very confident that we'll have an excellent presentation given the shortened time."