Securing the Future: Inclusive Cybersecurity Education for All

This project aims to serve the national interest by creating an inclusive cybersecurity technician education for all at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in order to secure the future cybersecurity workforce. The project intends to address Kentucky's shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals. The project team plans to investigate factors influencing high school and college students' career decisions, identify potential barriers to credential completion, and assess the impact of faculty and peer mentoring on student success. The project team intends to identify effective mentoring attributes in order to effectively recruit skilled technical employees. The project has the potential to increase enrollment in cybersecurity credentials by enhancing access to accurate information for high school students, teachers, and counselors. The project will support peer mentors, and summer workshops for high school teachers. A part-time retention and recruitment specialist plans to engage near-peer mentors to support minority and female students by hosting workshops of the cybersecurity career exploration across the college campus. The project team plans to recruit 240 diverse students (including female students and students from groups underrepresented in STEM) from local high schools into a hybrid campus program. This hybrid program includes various activities to expose students to cybersecurity skills, credentials and career pathways. The project will recruit and train 20 teachers or counselors over the life of the project. The project team will provide teachers or counselors with a basic understanding of cybersecurity so that they will be able to facilitate success for high school students enrolled in dual credit cybersecurity courses. The project findings will be disseminated to other community colleges across the state. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the Nation's economy. 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.