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1. 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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2. Development and Evaluation of Cybersecurity Education Games for High School Students

   Jin, Ge; Tu, M.; Kim, T.; Heffron, J.; White, J.; Trekles, A. (September 2018, International journal of engineering research & innovation)

   Cybersecurity workforce development is the key to protecting information and information systems, and yet more than 30% of companies are short on security expertise. To address this need, the current authors have developed four cybersecurity education games to teach social engineering, secure online behavior, cyber defense methods, and cybersecurity first principles. These games are intended to recruit the next generation cybersecurity workforce by developing an innovative cybersecurity curriculum and pedagogical methods to provide high school students with hands-on activities in a game-based learning environment. Purdue University Northwest (PNW) offered high school summer camps for 181 high school students in June of 2016 and June of 2017. Out of 181 high school participants, 107 were underrepresented minority students, including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. To evaluate the effectiveness of the cybersecurity education games, post-camp surveys were conducted with 154 camp participants. The survey results indicated that the games were very effective in cybersecurity awareness training. Furthermore, the cybersecurity education games were more effective for male students than female students in raising student interest in computer science and cybersecurity. 

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3. Development of a Femalized Kinesthetic Learning Model to Increase Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Career Interests in African American Middle School Girls

   Fash, M F (December 2024, ProQuest LLC)

   Although an increase in their participation could reduce workforce shortages and diversify innovations in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, African American women remain significantly underrepresented in male-dominated AEC careers. Furthermore, partly due to the lack of early and meaningful AEC exposure, African American girls tend to have low interests in AEC careers. AEC infused out-of-school time (OST) programs have been successful in increasing middle-school girls’ AEC career self-efficacy and interests. However, there is limited understanding on how salient identities interact with learning experiences in AEC-infused OST learning environments to impact AEC career interests. The purpose of this research is to investigate how the salient identities of African American middle-school girls interact with learning experiences within a developed femalized AEC Kinesthetic Learning Model (fAEC-KLM) to impact AEC career interests. Adopting Lent’s social cognitive career theory, the gender and culturally responsive fAEC-KLM is a five-day AEC-infused OST program that engaged 14 African American middle-school girls in bridge-building projects, a panel session with female and African American AEC undergraduates, interactions with female and African American AEC professionals, and success stories featuring female and African American AEC professionals. Using a mixed method approach, data from interviews, surveys, tests, and observations are analyzed to assess changes in AEC career knowledge, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and interests. Results show that the most effective fAEC-KLM components were lectures, bridge construction project, and peer interactions which improved AEC career knowledge, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging respectively. These in turn increased AEC career interests and three interest categories (active, passive, and null) are utilized to explain how varying fAEC-KLM interactions contributed to three different levels of AEC career interests. The findings align with prior career development and intersectionality frameworks. Findings also fill a critical gap in career development literature by providing insights into AEC career interest development processes in African American middle school girls through OST programs while highlighting how gender and culturally responsive approaches foster interests. Insights and recommendations contribute to ongoing literature to support interventions and policies that foster more equitable representation in AEC careers, increase diversity in AEC innovations, and reduce workforce shortages. 

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4. Educating the Next Generation of Cybersecurity Experts

   Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova, West Virginia; Robin A.M. Hensel, West Virginia (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   The overall goal of the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) S-STEM funded "Attracting and Cultivating Cybersecurity Experts and Scholars through Scholarships" (ACCESS) program is to increase Cybersecurity-related STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduate students with demonstrated financial need and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, persistence, graduation, and career pathways of these students to improve the education of future STEM workers. Specifically, ACCESS aims to contribute towards addressing the tremendous governmental and industry need for highly skilled cybersecurity experts. Program objectives include: (1) increasing annual enrollment of students in the B.S. in Computer and Information Sciences programs with specialization in Cybersecurity; (2) enhancing curricular and extra-curricular student support services and activities for students; (3) strengthening the partnerships with computer and information technology employers; and (4) investigating the impact of the curricular and co-curricular activities on student success. While significant research has been done relative to student success, retention, and persistence to graduation in STEM fields, cybersecurity is a new field of study and factors affecting student recruitment, academic success, retention, persistence to graduation within this field are not known. In year 1, students were recruited, applications were evaluated, and scholarships were awarded to nine academically talented students, beginning fall 2020. Of these students, four are female (one is from an underrepresented minority population) and five are male (three are from underrepresented minority populations). The students engage in a set of co-curriculum activities, including participation in: outreach activities; technical and career development seminars; a cybersecurity-focused student organization; and potentially, cybersecurity undergraduate research and summer internship opportunities. The paper and poster describe the background of the ACCESS program, recruitment and selection of ACCESS scholarship recipients, project activities, and challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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5. Bulldog Bytes: Engaging Elementary Girls with Computer Science and Cybersecurity

   Lineberry, Litany; Lee, Sarah; Ivy, Jessica; Bostick, Heather (April 2018, ASEE SE Section Annual Conference)

   Responsive to broadening participation challenges, Mississippi State University (MSU) established the Bulldog Bytes Outreach Program in 2013 with a residential summer camp for middle school girls funded through the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT). Since then the program has grown to provide co-curricular activities to K12 students throughout the state. Following a pilot offering of an elementary camp in 2016, the Bulldog Bytes program delivered two of these camps in small towns during 2017, supporting a strategy of engaging under-resourced students with computing in their home communities. This paper will detail our project-based approach to learning and share experiences from the elementary camps. 

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