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A KU program to train future professionals in the field of national security is growing, and particularly will increase its focus on China.

The University of Kansas’ Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence has received $300,000 in new federal funding for the upcoming school year, the university announced Thursday.

KU said the new funding will expand the program’s study of China and the surrounding region. The new funding — which came from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence — will support a summer 2025 study tour of Taiwan and South Korea. That tour will be both for students and faculty members of the university.

Additionally, the funding will allow KU to expand its instruction of the Uyghur language, an important but little-taught language of central and eastern Asia. KU already is one of the few U.S. institutions to provide in-depth instruction in the Uyghur language.

“The new funding will enable us to expand our current courses to include online formats and topics of national security,” Akiko Takeyama, director of the Center for East Asian Studies, said in a press release.

Over the last decade, the Uyghur people have become more of a focus in U.S.-China relations as human rights groups have accused the Chinese government of persecuting and arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs who live in northwest China.

The new funding for KU’s Intelligence Community Center comes at a time when the university is working to become a much larger player in the field of national security. As the Journal-World reported in April, KU won a $22 million federal grant to build a national security research center on its West Campus in Lawrence.

The 80,000-square-foot building, when it opens in the coming years, is expected to add about 250 jobs to the area surrounding KU Innovation Park, which is on West Campus northwest of 23rd and Iowa streets. The center is expected to employ researchers on topics ranging from cybersecurity to radar technology to artificial intelligence. But KU leaders also are predicting the center will be a magnet for private companies that want to be close to national security researchers and students.

KU’s Intelligence Community Center is one of the programs on campus that is producing those students. The center is one of the few university programs in the country that allow students to earn a minor or a certificate in Intelligence & National Security Studies. In 2022, the university received a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. intelligence community to begin offering undergraduate degrees in biotechnology, information technology and cybersecurity.

As part of the federal program, KU partners with Dodge City Community College, Garden City Community College, Kansas City Community College and Seward County Community College to try to attract minority students and students of rural backgrounds to the national security field. Federal officials have expressed concern that the U.S. intelligence community, for example, lacks diversity in terms of both race and background that could lead to blind spots.

“One of the unofficial mottos of the intelligence community is being able to speak truth to power,” Mike Denning, a retired Marine Corps colonel who serves as KU’s Director of the Office of Graduate Military Programs, told the Journal-World in a 2022 article about KU’s national security ambitions. “And diversity is a critical component to know what truth is.”

KU leaders think the university also has some other advantages in building a national security training program. KU’s location near Fort Leavenworth is one of them. Fort Leavenworth is already known as the “intellectual capital of the Army” thanks to housing the United States Army Command and General Staff College, where many of the Army’s top leaders go to study. Being able to provide additional national security training to students at the staff college is a unique part of KU’s program.

Language expertise is another big component of the KU program, and one that is getting strengthened with the latest funding. The university is already one of about 10 schools in the U.S. designated as a Department of Defense Language Training Center. KU has particular expertise in Russian and Central and Eastern European Studies. KU has been training foreign area officers for Soviet-era countries for more than 50 years. Those foreign area officers often are assigned to embassy positions, and their duties often include intelligence work, KU officials have said.