Carnegie Mellon University/CyberCorps Scholarships

Background

A scholarship program for graduate students at CMU.

Insights

Source, CMU.edu http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2014/fall/cybercorps-scholarships.shtml

For more than a decade, Carnegie Mellon University has participated in the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS), a federal program that aims to strengthen the workforce charged with protecting America's critical information infrastructure.

The SFS program has funded full-tuition scholarships and stipends for CMU graduate students in information security totaling more than $21.6 million.

In total, 157 SFS scholars have graduated from Carnegie Mellon and gone on to apply their technology and policy expertise in positions with the federal government, such as the Department of Defense, Department of Justice and national laboratories. SFS scholars commit to federal employment after graduation, typically for a period of two years.

Allison Boos (E'14) accepted a job as a digital forensic analyst in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. Through the SFS program, she studied information security at the College of Engineering's  Information Networking Institute (INI) and completed a summer internship at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's National Incident Response Team.

"The experience of being an SFS student not only provided me with the education and skills inherent in a Carnegie Mellon education but also surrounded me with others with similar interests and goals, establishing a network that is both personally and professionally beneficial," Boos said.

While at Carnegie Mellon, SFS students meet recruiters from organizations such as the FBI and Sandia National Laboratories and may network with other students bound for federal employment. The Department of Defense Information Assurance Scholarship Program (IASP) is another program for which the INI's information security graduates are eligible, and it has provided full-tuition scholarships and stipends for one graduate and three current students to date. INI Director  Dena Haritos Tsamitis, principal investigator of the SFS and IASP, reports that the most recent award of $5.6 million is the largest received to date. In addition to the SFS scholarships, the grant also will support Carnegie Mellon's participation in collaborative research in the Information Security Research and Education (INSuRE) program with other institutions. Under Tsamitis' leadership, Carnegie Mellon has earned three distinct cybersecurity designations from federal agencies: Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense Education; CAE in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense Research; and CAE in Cyber Operations. The designations allow faculty and students to participate in the INSuRE program, the SFS program, the IASP and the Information Assurance Capacity Building Program (IACBP).

Approximately 40 minority-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), have participated in the IACBP at Carnegie Mellon to develop and advance information assurance curricula at their home institutions. As a result of their IACBP participation, several institutions have gone on to earn CAE designation. "

As one of the first universities to be designated as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance education in 2000 and offer the SFS, Carnegie Mellon has been a leader in cybersecurity education. The INI fulfills a vital role in the College of Engineering by leading this important initiative and offering world-class educational programs," said  James H. Garrett Jr., dean of the College of Engineering and the Thomas Lord Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.