The computing and communications infrastructure upon which the United States relies has been shown again and again to be vulnerable to attack, disruption, infiltration, and subversion. The result is a very rapid growth in the need for trained cybersecurity professionals, particularly in government. To address this need, this project will provide two years of scholarship support to students pursuing a specialization in cybersecurity. Specific attention will be given to the recruitment of females, veterans, minorities, and first-generation college students. North Carolina State University plans to partner with community colleges in North Carolina to aid in the recruitment of a diverse group of students. A recruiting pipeline will be developed and include community colleges and K-12 outreach. Students will receive a technically deep education that will be well-grounded in the context of government functions, priorities, and resources. In addition, the impact of the project will extend beyond the scholarship recipients with the establishment of a new undergraduate Cybersecurity Concentration and enhancement of the existing graduate Cybersecurity Track.
North Carolina State University is designated as a Department of Homeland Security and National Security Agency Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research. Each year four undergraduate students and one master’s degree student will be selected for support. Significant efforts will be made to recruit outstanding students and to ensure diversity in the recruited class. A partnership with one or more community colleges will be established to expand the pool of potential students. New courses will be added to the curriculum, including a capstone Cybersecurity Project course and a course on Recent Topics in Cybersecurity. The project will also support the development of a new concentration in cybersecurity for undergraduate students that will graduate at least 25 students per year. The project will benefit from exceptionally strong ties with industry and government employers. Cybersecurity professionals will be recruited as adjunct instructors, which will bring an important industry perspective to the coursework. Students will engage in an internship with a government employer during their training and will participate in a variety of related supplemental experiences, including professional certifications, research projects, national cybersecurity competitions, a guest speaker series, travel to national meetings, and K-12 outreach. The Department of Computer Science will support the placement of graduates in government positions and will host an annual job fair with government employers. The Cybersecurity Education Director will coordinate the project and an external team will continually assess the effectiveness of the approach.
This project is supported by the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, which funds proposals establishing or continuing scholarship programs in cybersecurity and aligns with the U.S. National Cyber Strategy to develop a superior cybersecurity workforce. Following graduation, scholarship recipients are required to work in cybersecurity for a federal, state, local, or tribal Government organization for the same duration as their scholarship support.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
