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1. Create and Host Cyber Competition Using the Preliminary Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE)

   Thompson, Christopher; Bearden, Gabriel A.; Sloan, Ty; Laurens, Roy; Zou, Cliff; Caulkins, Bruce (December 2020, Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC))

   null (Ed.)

   As the world becomes more interconnected and our lives increasingly depend on the cyber world, the increasing threat of cyberattacks and cybercrimes make it critical for us to provide better and practical training of the cybersecurity workforce. In recent years, cybersecurity competition has become one of the most effective and attractive way for educating and training college students or professionals. In this paper, we first systematically introduce in details the step-by-step procedure and technical knowledge on how we take use of the ongoing DoD cyber-range environment called Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE) to set up cyber competition virtualization environment, configure and install operating systems and popular services with various well-representative vulnerabilities, and set up the participant’s access and scoring system. Then we introduce the cybersecurity competition successfully organized by us in I/ITSEC 2019 conference, and the experience and lessons learned from this real-world competition event. The technical details and knowledge presented in this paper could help other researchers and educators to set up their own cyber competition environment or event to better train the future cybersecurity workforce. 

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2. Curriculum to Broaden Participation in Cybersecurity for Middle School Teachers and Students

   Buchanan, L.; Scarlatos, L.; Telendii, N. (March 2021, 11th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference)

   To both broaden and increase participation in any STEM field such as cybersecurity, we need to attract more students. Research shows that to do this, students need to be engaged with cybersecurity during middle school. There is a lack of age-appropriate and classroom-ready cybersecurity curriculum, however, and many teachers feel unprepared to teach the subject. To address this gap, the CyberMiSTS project team created a summer professional development workshop for middle school teachers that integrated a recent research-based understanding of cybersecurity into a curriculum that is accessible to both middle school students and their teachers. The project sought to encourage participation of a broad and diverse set of students in the field of cybersecurity by showing them how human relations play an important role in cybersecurity. We discuss our prior related work using branching web comics to introduce middle school students to cybersecurity concepts and careers, and the state of evidence-based research into effective approaches and methods for cybersecurity education. We identify challenges to broadening the pipeline for a truly diverse cybersecurity workforce that can meet industry’s need for cybersecurity professionals with a wide range of experience and skills. The paper introduces our approach for the teacher professional development workshop, maps how we designed the project to meet our research goals, and documents initial findings regarding what is needed to increase teacher self-efficacy about cybersecurity concepts and careers in a middle school classroom. 

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3. Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity: Rethinking the Approach and the Process

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31239-8_6  

   Jacob, Johanna; Peters, Michelle; Yang, T. Andrew (January 2020, National Cyber Summit 2019)

   The need for cybersecurity professionals continues to grow and education systems are responding in a variety of ways. This study focusses on the “interdisciplinarity” of cybersecurity that contributes to the emerging dialogue on the direction, content and techniques involved in the growth and development of cybersecurity education and training. The study also recognizes the contributions of other disciplines to the field of cybersecurity by the discussion of relevant theories that contribute to understanding security in the context of legal, economics and criminology perspectives. Finally, quantitative analysis (security metrics) is done to understand the existing knowledge of security behaviors and beliefs among students from technical and non-technical majors, helps measure the interest fostered towards an academic pathway in cybersecurity and substantiates on the need for providing a level of cyber education for all individuals appropriate to their role in the society. 

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4. Building a Cybersecurity and AI Integrated Learning Pathway for Criminal Justice Professionals

   https://doi.org/10.53735/cisse.v12i1.197  

   Bai, Yan; Li, Juan (April 2025, Journal of The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education)

   With support from the National Science Foundation, The University of Washington Tacoma and North Dakota State University have developed scenario-based security curriculum and online showcase labs with interactive simulations and case studies across three progressive courses, revolutionizing cybersecurity education for Criminal Justice (CJ) professionals. By incorporating artificial intelligence into the curriculum, this project enhances CJ professionals’ capabilities. Our goal is to develop a skilled workforce of CJ professionals with cybersecurity and privacy knowledge, addressing the critical need for such cybersecurity expertise in CJ. Literature review, focus group survey results, course framework tailored for CJ professionals, example course modules, and implementation results are presented. 

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5. The Synergy of Intertwining Grant Activities: Cyber Up! and GenCyber Girls

   West, Tobi (August 2022, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   The ongoing workforce shortage of skilled and diverse cybersecurity professionals coupled with the continued upward trend of cybercrime has led to an increased number of funding opportunities from the federal government to support projects focused on technical skills development. Significant emphasis is placed on academic transfer pathways and education-to-career pathways for students from K-12 to community college and beyond. Utilizing funding from multiple sources, faculty have intertwined grant project activities to increase awareness of cybersecurity careers and academic pathways, emphasizing digital forensics and incident response. The two grant projects, Cyber Up! and GenCyber Girls, aimed to develop college-level curriculum and cybersecurity workshops for female high school students. Project activities were synthesized to create a summer camp for high school students based on the curriculum developed for the college programs in digital forensics and incident response. The synergy between the projects has shown an increase in female participation in the digital forensics course and helped build interest in cybersecurity careers among K-12 students. 

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