A grant from the National Security Agency (NSA) will position Columbus State University to increase awareness of career opportunities in cybersecurity and STEM fields among sixth through eighth-grade girls. The funds through the NSA’s GenCyber Grant program will benefit students in Columbus and neighboring communities while enhancing female underrepresentation in these scientific fields

The project, “Broadening Cybersecurity Awareness for Middle School Girls via GenCyber Outreach, Games and Storytelling,” focuses on increasing cybersecurity awareness among middle and junior high students with little to no cyber knowledge. The program seeks to expand their interests in cybersecurity careers and knowledge, as well as foster their leadership skills as cybersecurity ambassadors.

CSU’s TSYS Center for Cybersecurity faculty members Dr. Jianhua Yang, Dr. Linqiang Ge and center director Patrick Aiken, as well as Chris Lovelock, a Harris County Science and Technology Center teacher, are involved in this project. Yang explained that focusing their support on female students will ultimately contribute to building a diverse workforce along with promoting the ethics of appropriate online etiquette among the participating middle school students.

“There are less and less females interested in computer science, and there are even fewer females working in the cybersecurity industry nationally,” he said. “The goal of this project is to educate these girls about what cybersecurity is and how it impacts our daily life.”

The students involved in this program will attend a one-week-long summer camp in 2023. The camp will take place in CSU’s cyber range—a “live-fire” range where CSU students learn and where industry professionals can also practice live-fire exercises that address over 50,000 versions of malware on an exact replica of a company’s network. The range—the same equipment once used to train the Israeli Defense Force to protect the nation of Israel against cyber-attacks—is capable of simulating cyber incursions ranging from a simple web defacement to a full-blown ransomware attack.

While working in CSU’s cyber range, the participating students will learn the basics of cyber safety, apply those basics along with good ethics and online etiquette in their internet surfing, and return to their schools to build on that foundation in Cybersecurity Clubs. 

Yang hopes the students will ultimately be ambassadors for science and technology fields among their middle school and junior high peers as they influence them on the importance of cybersecurity awareness and technology careers. 

“We hope that through this program, some of our aspiring female technology leaders will be inspired to pursue their education here in Columbus State’s cybersecurity program,” mentioned Yang. “This would certainly contribute to advancing women and minorities in the science and technology fields.”

To learn more about CSU’s cybersecurity program, visit https://www.columbusstate.edu/turner/cybersecurity-center/.