The Old Dominion University (ODU) School of Cybersecurity will address the need for qualified government workers in cybersecurity fields through its CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) Cyber LeADERS program. This initiative will align faculty from ODU, Tidewater Community College (TCC), and Thomas Nelson Community College (TNCC) to fully integrate applied experiences into the academic programming of 24 SFS students. The SFS students will include community college students planning to transfer to ODU and ODU students seeking Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in cybersecurity. Using ODU’s LeADERS program as a foundation, participating SFS Cyber LeADERS will receive guidance and experiences that put them on a pathway to a government career in cybersecurity. More specifically, LeADERS are encouraged to take courses or engage in applied experiences related to leadership, academic internships, diversity, entrepreneurship, research, and service learning. Students chronicle and demonstrate their learning through the development of an electronic portfolio (e-portfolio), which is represented by the lower case “e†in the acronym “LeADERSâ€. The combination of an interdisciplinary academic program that employs active learning and other high impact teaching strategies is expected to produce experienced graduates who are prepared to enter a wide range of governmental careers and address the national need for skilled cybersecurity professionals.
Offering both undergraduate and graduate programming, the ODU School of Cybersecurity is one of the first interdisciplinary cybersecurity schools in the country. The partner institutions, TCC and TNCC, both offer associate’s degrees and have been designated as National Security Agency (NSA) Centers of Academic Excellence (CAE) in Cyber Defense Education and ODU’s Cyber Operations major has been designated as an NSA CAE in Cyber Operations. ODU’s interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity programs include courses in law, policy, leadership, interdisciplinary writing, criminology, philosophy, information technology, computer science, and computer engineering. The approach will leverage ODU’s innovative LeADERS program, which incentivizes students to participate in integrative and applied learning experiences. In addition to developing an e-portfolio, completing internships, and engaging in service learning, SFS Cyber LeADERS will participate in mentoring activities, structured research projects, interdisciplinary programming, and other activities provided by the School of Cybersecurity and the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative. Student co-curricular activities will be coordinated with the Coastal Virginia Center for Cyber Innovation that is part of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI). This project has the potential to inform future models of transferring students between NSA CAE designated programs. The project will also contribute to improving the diversity of the government’s cybersecurity workforce as African American and Hispanic students make up more than half of ODU cybersecurity students.
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.
