CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: A Clinical Rotation Approach to Professional Cybersecurity Workforce Development

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

This project establishes a new CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program at Oregon State University (OSU) to prepare highly qualified cybersecurity professionals to serve in federal, state, local, and tribal governments. Through a unique approach based on clinical rotations, the program will produce professionals ready to protect the nation's infrastructure against cyber adversaries. NSF funding will support scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students in four cohorts over five years. This project will emphasize recruitment, retention, and placement of qualified CyberCorps scholars, including first-generation college students and low-income students, and will evaluate and refine the clinical rotations approach to serve as a replicable model for developing a highly skilled cybersecurity workforce. With the goal of meeting the need for well-qualified cybersecurity professionals, OSU developed the Oregon Research and Teaching Security Operations Center (ORTSOC), a world-class security operations center that serves as the cornerstone of a rotation-based model. OSU’s cybersecurity degree option provides next generation of cyber defenders and researchers a unique service-learning experience through for-credit rotations at ORTSOC, while offering cybersecurity services to government and other public organizations throughout the region. Those rotations at the ORTSOC, combined with OSU’s rigorous cybersecurity curriculum and extracurricular activities, provide a unique blend of classroom and experiential learning opportunities for our cybersecurity students. Research involvement for students at both the undergraduate and graduate level will help further develop critical and creative thinking skills in the students, better preparing them to thrive in a rapidly evolving field. 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.