CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: Developing the Cybersecurity Workforce in West Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas

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This project seeks to address the growing national demand for cybersecurity professionals, especially in the public sector, by recruiting, educating, and training a diverse group of scholars from the University of Memphis (UofM) and its surrounding community colleges. It leverages the strengths of the cybersecurity education and research programs and highly diverse student populations at the UofM to prepare qualified students to enter the cybersecurity workforce in the public sector. Recruitment efforts will especially focus on underrepresented students, such as women, minorities, and veterans. This project aims to increase awareness of cybersecurity opportunities and career paths in government organizations, especially for West Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas students. This project will recruit four cohorts of scholars from the Departments of Computer Science, Business Information Technology, Engineering, Criminal Justice, and other departments at the UofM. Five goals will guide the execution of the project. First is to advance cybersecurity knowledge of SFS scholars through well-established undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity programs at the UofM. Second is to enhance hands-on cybersecurity skills of SFS scholars through innovative cybersecurity projects and professional development workshops. The third goal is to develop problem-solving capabilities of SFS scholars through participation in faculty-guided cybersecurity research. Fourth is to improve competitive advantages of SFS scholars in the cybersecurity job market through monthly CyberCorps seminars and student activities. The fifth goal is to increase the diversity of SFS scholars through collaboration with minority, women’s, and veterans’ organizations at the UofM, partnerships with local community colleges, and community outreach activities. Furthermore, this project will establish a sustainable scholarship management program to handle recruitment, mentoring, assessment, and retention. Finally, both formative and summative evaluations will be conducted to measure the success of achieving the project goals.This project is supported by the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, which funds proposals establishing or continuing scholarship programs in cybersecurity and aligns with the U.S. National Cyber Strategy to develop a superior cybersecurity workforce. Following graduation, scholarship recipients are required to work in cybersecurity for a Federal, state, local, or tribal Government organization for the same duration as their scholarship support.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.