The global cybersecurity crisis has challenged academic institutions to build and grow cybersecurity programs to help produce a skilled and knowledgeable cyber workforce. The current state of cybersecurity education is faced with three intersectional challenges: 1) a dire shortage of faculty and teachers, 2) a rapidly evolving field, and 3) limited access to quality curricular materials. While addressing the shortage of faculty requires a long-term solution, it has been shown that high-quality curricula not only helps institutions build programs, but also improve student learning outcomes.

To meet the ever-growing demand for well-trained, ethically responsible cybersecurity professionals, we looked to programs and students at community colleges in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as input for our new degree in cybersecurity. Then we applied curricular guidelines from CAE, NICE, ABET, and ACM to develop high quality, academically challenging, and career-enriching ABET-accredited pathways for community college students to a degree in cybersecurity that is responsive to industry trends, changing standards, and employer needs.

The lack of soft skills such as communication, diversity, leadership, and work ethics being taught in programs reduces the effectiveness of cybersecurity experts as organizations across all industry sectors become targets of increasingly complex and debilitating attacks. We propose a program to improve the career-readiness of future workforce by increasing soft skill competencies, encouraging engagement through experiential learning, and providing opportunities for learning and networking through professional development using mixed reality tools and other novel activities.

This presentation will cover international opportunities for cybersecurity faculty to expand their technical and cultural vision of the discipline. Its purpose is to share experiences gained and to entice other academic or professional experts in cybersecurity to conduct research, pursue professional development, assist in curriculum development, and/or assess cyber best practices at international institutions through the Fulbright program.

In 2018, NSF awarded a group of community colleges funding to establish a standalone CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service program. These community colleges received funding for student scholarships, tuition, and related costs. The session will briefly review the recruiting and selection process, the different curriculum pathways and describe the target audience to receive these scholarships. The fastpitch will also discuss how the institutions have collaborated to establish a cohort of students across multiple institutions.

This slide deck includes upcoming events, speaker photos and bios, as well as important resources available to you as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity.