The small college cybersecurity curriculum enhancement project.
Project Abstract: The Small College Cybersecurity Curriculum Enhancement Project is designed to improve the curriculum offered for students. The goal is to examine curriculum using2020Center for Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense (CAE/CD) guidelines and new ACM Community College Cybersecurity (Cyber2Yr2020) Program Guidance and update the existing program to fill instructional gaps. The major resource to be leveraged will be the Virginia Cyber Range. The Range solves a major small college dilemma, the lack of new lab material development time. The emphasis will be new objectives in the latest national guidance, and hands-on content for remote labs in existing courses. Since the curriculum is already approved by the College, the project will identify and include any missing objectives, and use a Backwards Design methodology to find new materials to achieve current objectives. This will result in better alignment of program and course objectives to actual student course lab work. Moreover, use of Virginia Cyber Range resources will update lab content, improve the program, and offer better opportunities for students. The current Cybersecurity program has two stackable certificates. The program is designated as a CAE/CD “Program in Development”. The project will align curriculum offerings with program and national recommendations, develop a Cybersecurity module used for recruitment in the introductory general education applications course, find and leverage Cybersecurity lab materials from the Virginia Cyber Range for networking and hardware classes, leverage new and existing certification resources across the program, and identify emerging program issues in the areas of diversity, inclusion, and embedded student resources.