results from faculty capacity building program

Carnegie Mellon University has previously received three NSF Federal Cyber Service Scholarship for Service – Capacity Building Track awards (from 2002 through 2007.) This funding has been used to develop and offer six editions of an intensive, month-long, in-residence summer program to help develop information assurance (IA) education and research capacity at colleges and universities designated as minority-serving institutions (MSIs) - specifically, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and hispanic serving institutions (HSIs).

The IACBP has exceeded the expectations of our participants and has made a measurable impact on the capacity of these MSIs to educate students in IA. With the last two grants Carnegie Mellon able to invite 36 faculty, including two department chairs, in computer and information science, computer information systems, and similar departments from 11 MSIs. The following results are just an example of accomplishments based on the 2004, 2005, and 2006 editions (plans for new courses or modules that are still under construction are not listed here):

At least six new undergraduate courses

At least five new graduate courses

At least ten new modules added to existing courses

At least seven new degree options

At least eight grant proposals

At least sixteen published papers

At least fourteen new certificate programs / workshops / symposia

Three new collaborative centers

One institution being designated a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance (Cal Poly Pomona, 2005)

Our participants go on to create an immediate impact at their home institutions. One example of this is David Miller from California State University, Northridge, who attended our 2005 capacity building program. Dr. Miller came to the program with the intention to create an Information Assurance course called "Special Topics in Information Systems, Information Security and Assurance." He developed the curriculum for the course during our program in the summer and was then able to offer it in the immediately following fall semester. The course was soon in high demand – all forty-one available seats were filled, spilling over onto a waiting list. The course has since become an approved regular offering in the university's curriculum, and it is the foundation for a full Information Assurance course curriculum that the university hopes to create.

Another way that our program has had enormous impact is by creating collaboration between several members of the California State University (CSU) system. Because of our 2005 capacity building program, five CSU schools have begun to work together to create modules, topics and courses that can be developed and distributed amongst the CSU system's 23 campuses. In the CSU system, students are encouraged to attend community colleges before entering the universities, and we have also incorporated Mount San Antonio College in our program to further spread the impact of our program into California's 109-campus community college system.

The response from faculty members who have participated in our capacity building programs, as well as from their respective department heads, has been uniformly and extremely positive.

Program participants have remained in contact with us here at Carnegie Mellon, as well as with each other. In the past four years, a few participants have also returned to Carnegie Mellon after the program to take CERT security courses. Detailed information about the results of previous NSF-funded capacity building programs is available in the final reports that have been submitted to the NSF.