Foreign Area Officer (FAO) MA Programs

FAO Program

The University of Kansas has been educating U.S. Foreign Area Officers for more than 50 years. The interdisciplinary MA program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at KU is one of the longest established in the nation, having trained over 150 Foreign Area Officers since 1968.

KU offers one-year (12-month) MA programs for well-prepared FAOs in the Americas, South Asia, Europe, Eurasia, China, North Africa, Middle East, North Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

KU’s commitment to international area studies is evident in the support it provides for an Office of International Programs governed by an Associate Vice Provost; four US Department of Education-funded Title VI National Resource Centers (NRC); five Title VI Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) programs, which annually award undergraduate and graduate FLAS fellowships in 28 languages; and six modern language departments. The NRC/FLAS programs comprise the University’s International Area Studies Centers, which include:

  • Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS)
  • Center for Global and International Studies (CGIS)
  • Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES)
  • Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)
  • Kansas African Studies Center (KASC)

KU’s language departments collaborate with its area studies centers to offer 38 languages, the most of any institution between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

To APPLY for any graduate programs.

For more information on languages offered at KU.

For more information about KU’s FAO programs, contact:

Mike Denning

FAO coordinator

gmjdenning@ku.edu