Teachers Design Cybersecurity Curriculum at Pace Program
The struggle to keep vital information away from hackers has become one of the key challenges of the digital age. Data breaches have become alarmingly commonplace, whether it be at major corporations or the theft of millions of federal employees’ personal information.
At a recently concluded two-week program at Pace University in Pleasantville, 22 high school teachers from around the country were provided tools to design a cybersecurity curriculum for their students.
From July 6-17, Pace hosted GenCyber 2015, offering instruction to the second-level educators who can then introduce that course of study at their schools.
“We are trying to establish a sense of community among teachers who will continue to implement the lesson plans that they designed during the workshop and to share their experience in introducing cybersecurity concepts to high school students,” said Dr. Li-Chiou Chen, professor and chair of the Department of Information Technology at Pace’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.
Dr. Darren Hayes, assistant professor and director of cybersecurity at Pace University and one of the GenCyber 2015 instructors, talked about digital forensics, which is the investigation of criminal activity. Hayes, who manages a computer forensics lab at the university’s Manhattan location, said cybersecurity is a burgeoning field with increasing numbers of job opportunities in the public and private sectors. He said students should be exposed to it as a possible career choice before entering college.
In addition to teaching cybersecurity, Hayes pairs Pace students with companies for internships and jobs in addition to his teaching duties.
The topics covered during the recent program included basic concepts and principles in cybersecurity, encryption, biometrics (such as using fingerprints, iris scans and passwords) and digital forensics, Chen said.
“At the end of the workshop, every teacher had designed two to three lesson plans that they will implement in their respective schools in the coming school year,” Chen said.
Amy Fox, a computer science teacher at Valhalla High School who participated in the program, said she has wanted to learn more about introducing cybersecurity to her students.
“It’s something that I’ve been very interested in and haven’t really had the time or the money to explore,” she said. “A lot of the same things that I’m learning here I’ll be able to use in my classroom.”
Fox also teaches at Westchester Community College and will use what she learned during the program for her college students.
“It’s definitely a field where students would have great opportunities to do wonderful things,” Fox said. “It’s one that I’ve never been able to explore with them before, so now I’ll have a body of knowledge that I can at least introduce them to the field.”
