SFS: Capacity: A Streamlined Cyber-Security & Intelligence (CS&I) Pathway: A Collaborative Model between Two Centers of Academic Excellence (IC CAE & CAE2Y)

Moraine Valley Community College, Palos Hills IL

Investigators

Abstract

The Moraine Valley Community College/Chicago State University (MVCC/CSU) partnership establishes a local educational pipeline in the cybersecurity and intelligence (CS&I) in the Chicago metropolitan community. The project addresses the need for both well-trained faculty and students to meet the growing need for CS&I professionals. This project creates pathways between undergraduate and graduate level programs. Students at MVCC, in existing majors like cybersecurity, geospatial information systems, management information systems, computer science, criminal justice and other social and physical sciences programs, can articulate to undergraduate programs at CSU with an academic minor in the security and intelligence (SIS). This partnership builds upon two recognized centers of academic excellence; the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence at CSU (IC CAE) and the NSA/DHS Center for Academic Excellence in Two-Year Colleges (CAE2Y) at Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC). The project also leverages the resources and academic community established by the NSF ATE funded National Support Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance (CSSIA) at MVCC. This project enriches the SFS program by utilizing and adapting a previously funded NSF project in the area of CS&I at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) in three key areas: 1) incorporate content and courses from the CSUSB Cyber Intelligence curriculum into the CSU's SIS undergraduate minor; 2) create a pathway between students from local community colleges using the CSSIA cybersecurity curriculum to articulate into undergraduate degrees at CSU with a security and intelligence minor; 3) build a pathway between the NSF ATE Cyber Center "CSSIA" and its network of affiliate community colleges and the CSU Cyber Intelligence similar to CyberWatch West and CSUSB. The project also includes a series of summer camps that expose students from two-year institutions to the career opportunities in CS&I. Additionally; the project includes a small-scale research program that explores the methods of teaching and learning CS&I and strategies to develop awareness of careers in CS&I in urban and diverse secondary classrooms. The research program utilizes classroom-based action research (collaborative research), where teachers, working collaboratively with CS&I experts, to develop and deliver instruction in the content area of CS&I. Ultimately, research findings could be used to develop best practices and to generate theory in the area of secondary level cybersecurity and intelligence instruction.