CyberCorps (R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program at Purdue University Northwest

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Purdue University Northwest (PNW), a National Security Agency/Department of Homeland Security designated National Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) in Cyber Defense Education, in collaboration with Ivy Tech and Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC), two CAE-2Y institutions, propose to jointly establish the Purdue Northwest Cyber Defenders Program (PCDP) to recruit, prepare, and support 18 PCDP Scholars at PNW to successfully transition to federal, state, local, tribal or territorial government employment as cybersecurity professionals. This project aims to make a significant contribution to the development of an innovative cybersecurity education system that can train an unrivaled cybersecurity future workforce through the CyberCorps(R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) program. Recruiting students and exposing them to real-world cybersecurity research and practices will motivate them to develop practical expertise in this critical field and allow them to leverage their experience as they enter the government workforce. This project seeks to establish a seamless pathway for students from MVCC and Ivy Tech to continue their higher education in PNW's CAE-4Y cybersecurity program. Mechanisms include new program articulation agreements, curriculum sharing, elective course recommendations, and extra-curricular activity collaboration. The short distances between the 3 institutions make this goal achievable. The PCDP will optimize recruitment by maximizing faculty involvement and information accessibility; developing plans to recruit underrepresented students (e.g., African American, Hispanic, female); and articulating plans to create a student pipeline for the long-term sustainability of PCDP program. The pathway created by this project can provide a practical national model for the transfer of community college students to a bachelor degree program, which will help to greatly improve the four-year program transfer rate for community college students. The success of PCDP program will establish a model for other STEM disciplines in the areas of student outreach, recruitment, mentoring, and placement.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.