The grant was announced Wednesday afternoon at the ESU school of business by U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran.
"We've been looking for ways to be helpful to Emporia State University, and to the state of Kansas at the same time," Moran said. "And one of the things that is important to our state is that we continue to grow the education and the opportunities for students who are, who want to be scientists, that are interested in math, research."
"Thank you to Emporia State for being a place in which we have the faith that these dollars, not out of my pocket but out of the American pocket, will be wisely spent and the return on investment will be great in a way that improves the chances of Kansans and Americans to have a better future and makes our country more safe."
Moran said he has been approached by companies from across the country, who said they will locate to areas with trained workforces.
"Cybersecurity is one of the things that businesses are growing in, they need employees, they need people with expertise, and our country in order to protect itself from adversaries like China and Russia and elsewhere, who attack us daily through cyber. We need a highly educated and trained workforce and companies will locate where they have those kind of students and graduates."
By creating that workforce in Emporia, Moran hopes to bring those companies to Kansas.
"We are an agricultural state, we produce a lot of airplanes, we produce a lot of energy. Those are huge important things to Kansas and I will never walk away from those," Moran said. "But can we add additional opportunities, in arenas that create a bright future for our state and keep our kids here and attract others to come here."
"That arena of cybersecurity, because of the demand for jobs, because there are so many employers who are looking for trained employees, then we can grow our economy in Kansas in the area of technology," he continued.
The grant has been approved, but ESU still needs to fill out the paperwork. Ed Bashaw, dean of the school of business, says the money will need to be spent before fall 2023, which is also when he plans for the new program to be ready for students.
"So in our computer science program, they can specialize in either application, app, development, they can specialize in what you would think of as cybersecurity, and maybe a little more traditional computer science and the programming languages and things like that," Bashaw said. "They can pick out two out of the three, which makes them really marketable."
The grant would establish cybersecurity as a new emphasis within the business school's computer science major. The cybersecurity classroom would be built next to the business school's existing hacker lab.
"With the $1.5 million, it's just for a year, but there's certain things that will stay here, the center will stay here, all the equipment, all the software, that has a life longer than that length of time," Bashaw said.
"The goal would be to be more attractive to companies so that they come to our campus more often, that we can form relationships with them, and our faculty, they can give us some real-world projects, disguised databases and things like that, for the cybersecurity aspect and the data security aspect of our program," he said.
ESU will also be aiming to have community programs, Bashaw said, such as cybersecurity summer camps for middle and high school students, as well as events to highlight the importance of cybersecurity.
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