About the IC CAE Program

The Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) Program was established in 2005 to meet the nation’s demand for a diverse cadre of professionals to carry out national security priorities and obligations.

The IC CAE Program’s purpose is to develop a cadre of qualified intelligence professionals to carry out America’s long-term national security initiatives by creating a competitive, knowledgeable, and diverse workforce through the provision of single and multi-year grants to colleges and universities. Schools selected as grant recipients are known as IC CAE Program Schools. Students that participate in IC CAE Program School-funded curricula and programs are made aware these efforts are funded by the IC and are given the opportunity to work towards becoming an IC CAE Scholar, an elite status obtained by achieving certain milestones. This association propels the students toward becoming an IC talent pool of choice.

The program encourages eligible institutions of higher education to submit proposals that support curricula and programs that will create, attract, and sustain a robust, knowledgeable, and diverse talent pool in multi-disciplinary areas of interest to the IC. The legislation that established the program emphasized increasing the diversity of the IC workforce, therefore, the IC CAE Program is especially interested in institutions with diverse populations of talent and in geographically diverse (rural) locations.  The IC CAE Program creates a community of committed IC professionals and academic faculty who will increase students’ knowledge of the IC and develop the critical skills needed to satisfy the national security mission as we build the right, trusted, agile workforce.

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