Last month, University of Idaho announced it would launch Idaho’s first bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity through the College of Engineering.
The program will be available beginning this fall and is accessible to students at the Moscow campus and possibly the Coeur d’Alene campus.
“Our Coeur d’Alene campus works closely with North Idaho College to allow students to get a (Bachelor of Science) in Computer Science in (Coeur d’Alene),” Center for Secure and Dependable Systems Director James Alves-Foss said. “We will be working to see how students can get the Cyber Security degree there as well – it is still a work in progress.”
Alves-Foss said the UI campus in Idaho Falls will be focused mostly on graduate education in cybersecurity because they do not have the resources for students to access general education courses necessary to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Through the new program, undergraduate students will learn about cybersecurity management and privacy, secure coding and analysis, networking fundamentals, operating system defense and software vulnerability analysis.
Cybersecurity is an internationally growing industry. The Center for Cyber Safety and Education projects 1.8 million jobs in the industry will remain unfilled by 2022.
Even though this will be the first time a bachelor’s program will be offered for cybersecurity at UI, the university has been considered a lead educator in cybersecurity programs for over 20 years. The National Security Center recognized UI as one of the first seven National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense in 1999. According to Alves-Foss, the university has been teaching cybersecurity classes since 1992.
Undergraduate scholarships for the program of up to $25,000 will be available through the Scholarship for Service program administered by the Center for Secure and Dependable Systems. Graduate scholarships of up to $34,000 will also be available.
These scholarships are funded by the National Science Foundation for cybersecurity undergraduates training for jobs at federal, state, local and tribal levels.
In addition, partnerships with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratory (SEL), Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Power, POWER Engineers and Avista will allow students in the program to access top organizations within the industry.
Support from the Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust helped the College of Engineering provide an expansion of UI’s research capabilities in cybersecurity in the form of a collection of computers, visualization equipment and state-of-the-art digital protective devices for the power grid called a testbed.
SEL and the College of Engineering began a $2.5 million partnership in April which will last five years, providing support for the cybersecurity program along with faculty and graduate student assistance.
Anteia McCollum can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @antxiam5