BAGHDAD — It makes for a strange college campus: cement blast walls, helicopters roaring overhead, packs of wild dogs howling, the risk of mortar and rocket attacks. Faculty keep Kevlar flak jackets at the ready. Students bring their rifles to class and leave them on the floor with the barrel pointing toward the front of the room.

In November, University of Maryland University College became the first U.S. college to offer classes on the ground in Iraq, soon joined by a school from Texas. It's a reflection of greater stability in Iraq, as violence has dropped, and of the number of American troops leaving small urban outposts for large bases where the courses are taught.

The classes, for service members only, offer students a sense of normalcy, a place where a professor calls them by their first name, where classmates debate ideas openly, where academic discussions often encompass the lives they lead in Iraq.

On a recent Sunday morning, several sleep-deprived soldiers carrying rifles and textbooks made their way to a theater built for Saddam Hussein. Inside, professor Lisa Brooks was teaching them about sleep and dreams.

A voice on the Camp Victory loudspeaker interrupted: "Attention, please. There will be a controlled detonation in 10 minutes."

UMUC, part of the public university system of Maryland, has been offering courses on military bases in Europe and Asia for more than 50 years. Faculty now teach in Afghanistan and other dangerous sites — professors reported shots fired at their helicopter in Afghanistan — but no one has ever been hurt, said Greg von Lehmen, acting provost for UMUC.

In Iraq, seven UMUC professors and four staff members work at two locations, with about 300 students taking accelerated college classes such as American government, math, cultural anthropology and macroeconomics. Students can earn two-year, four-year and master's degrees.

Even on a protected military base, college in a war zone has a makeshift, edgy feel. UMUC faculty teach wherever they can find space. At Victory, a network of bases near Baghdad International Airport that has served as the U.S. military's nerve center in Iraq since 2003, classes have been held in a tent, the back of a chapel and in a conference room built in Saddam's former stable for camels and horses.

Faculty live in temporary military housing, with a chilly walk outside to the bathrooms at night. They marvel over the remnants of Saddam's regime, the palaces filled with chandeliers and artwork, the artificial lakes.

Despite the hardships, university officials said they had no trouble finding faculty to teach in Iraq. Some people volunteer for financial reasons.

"You're not paying for your room, for food, so you can pocket everything you make down here," said Stacey Tate, a field representative, who said she left her home at UMUC's site in Heidelberg, Germany, for a change of pace and the challenge of launching a program from scratch.

Service members, many of whom had been taking online courses while deployed, were delighted to learn they could attend classes with live professors, said Staff Sgt. Jimmy Labas. The Army pays tuition for its deployed soldiers. "It's a great opportunity," he said. "It helps their morale and it helps them get ahead."