RET Site: Cybersecurity Research Experience for Educators through Data Science (CREEDS)

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Emerging cybersecurity challenges require groundbreaking solutions that employ technologies like the internet-of-things and artificial intelligence. It is therefore vital to equip students with the computer science skills necessary to pursue careers in these fields. The University of Texas El Paso aims to address this issue by engaging middle and high school instructors in a 6-week immersive summer research program focused on high priority and emerging cybersecurity topics. The site will recruit 10 educators from the primarily Hispanic-serving Independent School Districts of El Paso in an effort to broaden participation and build long-term partnerships between teachers, faculty mentors, and industry advisors in the bi-national metropolis. Through these collaborations, educators will return to their classrooms with deeper cybersecurity content knowledge and curricular modules to inspire their students towards computing, data science, cybersecurity, and problem solving.This RET Site at the University of Texas El Paso will engage Middle and High Schools STEM teachers from El Paso County in cybersecurity and data science research. The main objectives of the RET Site are to: (1) strategically recruit middle and high school teachers and offer high-quality research experience on both technical and ethical aspects of computer science with special focus on cybersecurity and data science; (2) provide continuous collaborative support to develop curricular training modules for delivering to middle and high school students; (3) enable training the trainers/mentors to efficiently engage the RET participants in their research; (4) offer authentic research experience through 6-weeks of summer institute; (5) Disseminate and promote Site’s results to local and national educators.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.