2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 396: Supporting Students' Success in the Cybersecurity Field: Accomplishments and Lessons Learned by the ACCESS project

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

The NSF S-STEM funded project "Attracting and Cultivating Cybersecurity Experts and Scholars through Scholarships" (ACCESS) has a goal to increase the number of high-achieving undergraduate students with demonstrated financial need who complete a degree in the cybersecurity field. This goal contributes towards addressing the huge unmet need for cybersecurity experts. This paper presents the activities and the accomplishments of the ACCESS project thus far. The ACCESS project has successfully awarded scholarships to four cohorts of students consisting of a total of 50 unique students and has achieved its objective to increase the annual enrollment in the B.S. and Area of Emphasis (AoE) in Cybersecurity at West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. Specifically, the enrollment has more than doubled since the beginning of the project. Over four years, the ACCESS project developed and offered numerous co-curricular activities and student support services and has strengthened its partnerships with many cybersecurity employers from the public and private sectors. Students’ feedback about the ACCESS project, which was provided using surveys and focus groups discussions conducted by the external evaluation team, was overwhelmingly positive and highlighted significant benefits to students’ academic success and their future professional careers. This paper also presents the lessons learned that were synthesized using the observations made by the project team and evaluation team, and the feedback provided by the students. These lessons learned can be institutionalized at West Virginia University and elsewhere in higher education to aid students' success in their education and future professional careers in the cybersecurity field.

Authors

Dr. Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-4683-672X West Virginia University [biography]

Dr. Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova is a Professor at the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. Her research interests are in software engineering, cybersecurity, and data analytics, as well as in higher education focused on these areas. She has served as a Principal Investigator on various NSF, NASA, DoD, and industry funded projects. She leads the B.S. in Cybersecurity program and serves as Academic Coordinator of the M.S. in Software Engineering program at West Virginia University. She has served on program and organizing committees of many international conferences and workshops.
Daniel Mackin Freeman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3147-9371 University of Washington [biography]

Daniel Mackin Freeman is a doctoral candidate in Portland State University’s Department of Sociology and a Research Scientist at the University of Washington Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity. He received his BFA in General Fine Arts with a focus on social practice from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and his MS in Sociology from Portland State University. With a background in the philosophy of art and education, Daniel’s current research focuses on how school structure and curricular emphases both result from and perpetuate social inequalities.
Dr. Robin A.M. Hensel http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1858-6452 West Virginia University [biography]

Robin A. M. Hensel, Ed.D., is a Teaching Professor in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University and an ASEE Fellow Member. As a mathematician and computer systems analyst, she collaborated in engineering teams to support energy research before entering higher education where she taught mathematics, statistics, computer science, and engineering courses, secured over $5.5M to support STEM education research, led program development efforts, and served in several administrative roles. She has been recognized for her teaching, advising, service, and research and as an Exemplary Faculty Member for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

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