WATERLOO - Nermin Ferkic knows what it's like to live in Iowa without knowing English.

No es facil. It's not easy.

That, in short, explains why school is back in session for staff and administration at Hawkeye Community College. The inaugural graduating class of the college's first conversational Spanish course now sprinkles the campus with Spanish. The courses, put on by El Centro Latinoamericano, the Latino resource center, are designed to facilitate communication with Spanish-speaking students and their parents.

When Ferkic, Hawkeye's public safety coordinator, fled Bosnia 10 years ago, he didn't speak a word of English. So he was thrilled at the opportunity to take Spanish classes at the college. After all, he had already taken some courses at the University of Northern Iowa to better communicate with students.

Ferkic is the campus' public safety handyman. He might unlock a car and enforce a court's no-contact order all in a day's work. He said he speaks Spanish to students even if he knows they're fluent in English because it builds trust and community.

"We want students to talk to us, to come to us if there's a problem," he said.

Speaking Spanish to Hispanic students may be helpful, but often it's not essential. That's not the case with many of their parents. College recruiters quickly discovered communicating effectively with parents of Hispanic students often requires a working knowledge of Spanish.

Quentin Hart, the college's associate director of multicultural affairs, spearheaded the effort to better serve its small but growing Hispanic population, which makes up about 2 percent of its student body. As one of the state's most diverse community colleges - minorities make up nearly 12 percent of its student body, compared to 9 percent statewide - he said it's important for the school to reach out to all its students.

"Whenever we recruit, oftentimes we may have to speak to parents with limited English," he said.

The college hopes to add conversational Bosnian classes in the future.

In the course of teaching the class, El Centro Latinoamericano Director Gina Cassis said she wasn't as concerned with her students speaking perfect Spanish as she was exposing them to a different culture and language. So while her students took tests and she corrected them, there were no class grades. Everyone passed.

She said she had one student who felt so overwhelmed in the first few days of class that she started crying and wanted to quit.

"I told her, 'You started with nothing, you're doing great,'" she said. "That overwhelming feeling and stress they felt, they've now put themselves in the shoes of that other person. They're going to be a lot more patient with them in the future."

Contact Jens Manuel Krogstad at (319) 291-1580 or jens.krogstad@wcfcourier.com.