You don’t find the CIA. The CIA finds you.

Or does it? The intelligence agency isn’t betting on that, if its new push to recruit students through college marketing courses is any indication.

The timing during such a deep recession helps sell the agency as an attractive employer, say University of Southern California students involved in advertising one CIA recruiting event. After all, a well-paid, secure government job, even one sometimes touched by controversy, may appeal to soon-to-be college graduates who might never have considered a spy career in better economic times. “All we hear today is about the bad economy and how this is basically the worst time to graduate. But the CIA is very interested in hiring graduating seniors and is targeting USC students,” said Allison Kosty, a political science major who is in a class of USC students working on the CIA campaign. “So that’s a huge bonus for us.”

She and 26 classmates are part of a 5-year-old program that has joined the CIA with students in marketing courses at 30 universities throughout the country.

The agency wants help selling itself to bright young candidates, especially those who speak key languages such as Mandarin (China) and Farsi (Iran) or who studied economics or computer engineering. The schools — USC, Michigan State and the University of New Mexico, for the current semester — say they want their students to gain real-world marketing experience, whether for soft drinks or clandestine operations.

Therese Wilbur, an assistant professor of marketing who teaches the USC course and ran a similar project for the FBI last year, said CIA officers visited her class twice this semester and asked for a campaign that taps into USC’s ethnic diversity and does not wrap itself too tightly in the U.S. flag.

Wilbur, who managed international brands for toy-maker Mattel Inc. before she began teaching in 2006, said the campaign tries to appeal to students’ interest in an intriguing, well-rewarded career and to their altruism.

The student marketers say they know they may face criticism that the CIA failed in intelligence-gathering missions before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq and that its practices have been much-debated. Still, Wilbur said, no student objected to assisting the CIA in finding high-quality recruits to help keep the country safe.

In the class, a preliminary suggestion for a slogan urged potential recruits to “Discover the Truth” about the CIA. That was jettisoned after some students in a test survey didn’t understand it and others suggested that such a search might turn up information discouraging to applicants.

Instead, the class settled on a slogan that invites people to “Discover the CIA. Be Part of Something Bigger,” which is imposed over a colorful world map in the campaign’s graphics.

Class member Sunny Nguyen, a fine arts major, said she was struck by the assignment’s significance. “By joining the CIA, you can make a difference globally,” she said. “And your life holds a different sort of meaning.”

Schools are chosen for their marketing curricula as well as a broadly diverse student population. “We are looking constantly for diverse pools of applicants given the critical nature of our mission,” said CIA spokesman George Little, who added that the agency especially values language skills, overseas experience and candidates from families who are first- or second-generation Americans. U.S. citizenship, however, is a requirement.

The student-designed marketing programs are arranged through EdVenture Partners, an organization based in Orinda, just east of Berkeley, Calif., that serves as a middleman between colleges and clients including Honda and the country of Morocco. The classes receive $2,500 to cover costs such as posters, table rentals and pizza for focus groups, but reap no reward aside from bragging rights on their resumes, officials said.

Wilbur’s upper-division marketing class, which operates like an actual advertising agency with one big account per semester, did not know in advance who its client would be. So students quickly had to dispel their own CIA stereotypes of a James Bond life with hot cars and cool gadgets or a secretive existence with no family contact allowed.

Jeffrey Kelly, an architecture major and advertising minor who is one of the campaign coordinators, said a common myth, soon belied by their own efforts, was “that you don’t apply to the CIA, but that the CIA finds you.”

At a recent classroom session, group leaders discussed deadlines for announcements in campus publications, colors for a banner, the name of a Web site and how to ensure that USC police were aware of the recruiting event, which was held Tuesday on campus.

A similar event at New York University in 2005 was canceled after protests, but Little said that had been the only disruption in the student marketing program. The USC students say they have encountered no criticism on a campus that has a substantial number of conservative-leaning students. Some political activists on campus say that they are not thrilled to host the CIA but that no one wants to stop students from exploring jobs and possibly helping to improve the nation’s espionage.

The Rev. Frank Wulf, pastor at United University Church and a campus chaplain active in anti-war protests, said the CIA has the right to recruit on campus. Still, he has concerns “that military, CIA and FBI recruiters use this time of economic crisis to present themselves when students don’t have the opportunity to make as independent a choice.”

As a result of working on the campaign, some of Wilbur’s students say they too may apply for CIA jobs. But as if already inculcated in spy culture, they say they can’t publicly acknowledge that.

“No comment,” said one young man who was clearly mulling it. “I’d rather not say.”

Working undercover

Last year, the CIA recruited at about 1,000 U.S. campuses, with the marketing classes a small part of those efforts, CIA spokesman George Little said. About 120,000 people, college-age and older, applied for CIA jobs last year and the numbers are running higher this year. Overall, the agency is continuing a hiring surge that began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but Little said the number of hirings is classified. CIA starting salaries range from about $50,000 to $90,000, with bonuses for some language fluencies.