This project seeks to establish a new CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) to prepare highly-qualified Cybersecurity professionals for entry into the federal, state, local, and tribal government workforce.
Rochester Institute of Technology plans to provide CyberCorps scholarships to talented students enrolled in undergraduate programs in Computing Security, Computer Science, and Software Engineering. These students will receive an MS degree in Computing Security in addition to a BS in their respective programs upon graduation. This proposal aims to leverage the well-established Computing Security, Computer Science, and Software Engineering programs to educate next generation cybersecurity professionals and to create a unique cohort experience of students from multiple disciplines. It will allow students to learn cybersecurity from different perspectives while unifying them by shared experience: common coursework, monthly seminars, work on research projects, and travel to security conferences. CyberCorps scholarship requirement will build on RIT's well-established undergraduate cooperative education (co-op) model. This proposal leverages RIT?s infrastructure, diverse programs, faculty resources, and industry/military relationships to support a pool of qualified candidates who are interested in pursuing careers in cybersecurity.
RIT's SFS graduates will become part of the government cybersecurity workforce. Their scholarly contributions will be disseminated at professional conferences related to cybersecurity. The PIs will discuss lessons learned in running this CyberCorps program at appropriate venues in educational and federal settings such as CISSE Colloquium or NICE conferences. The PIs and the SFS scholars will visit the City of Rochester schools with a large population of underrepresented groups in computing. Student scholars will increase awareness of cybersecurity threats and teach students basic skills how to stay safe online.
