SU helps fund high school course on cyber security

By: Peter de Montmollin

Posted: 3/28/06

Students at Rome Catholic School are currently enrolled in a pilot cyber security course, funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., and Syracuse University.

The course, which began Jan. 31, was offered to RCS sophomores, juniors and seniors for high school credit.

Students in the class are taught a variety of topics, including encryption and data protection, computer networking and security and ethical and legal concepts of cyber defense, said RCS Principal Chris Mominey.

"Kids are pretty computer savvy these days." Mominey said. "We are meeting (their) standards."

Kamal Jabbour, a professor of computer science and engineering at SU and principle computer engineer at the lab, said he developed the course curriculum in response to President George W. Bush's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace."

The president's strategy, released in 2003, called for a public-private partnership for the defense of cyberspace.

After developing the course, Jabbour asked RCS to host the pilot. Eventually, a three-way partnership with SU, the lab and RCS formed to test it.

"The university has a long-time relationship with the Air Force research lab in Rome," said Eric Spina, dean of the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science. That relationship has made clear the importance of cyber security, he said.

"We need more people who are arching their education towards engineering and computer science," Spina said. "(The cyber security course) gets them on target for engineering and computer science degrees."

The initial plan was to gradually expand the course, with the hopes of making it part of high school curriculums nationwide, Jabbour said.

However, the involvement of Project Advance, a partnership between the university and local high schools that allows eligible seniors to take SU courses in their schools for credit, has sped up the process.

"We are always on the lookout for new and innovative courses," said Gerald Edmonds, the project's director. This will be the fourth computer engineering program offered by SU through Project Advance.

Jabbour said the project is using his curriculum to design a program to prepare and certify local high school instructors to teach the course.

Local teachers may sign up for the program designed by Dan Pease, an SU professor of computer and information science who is a consultant at the lab, this summer, Edmonds said.

The Air Force lab will initially help Pease with the program, Edmonds said. However, the lab will give all control of the program to Pease and to Project Advance after this summer.

When SU offers the cyber security course through Project Advance next school year, high school students who pass the course will receive three SU credits in computer science and engineering.

Jabbour said he has discovered problems with teaching cyber security while testing the pilot course at RCS.

"Cyber security is not intuitive," he said. "You can have the smartest students and the most highly trained teachers, but if they have not dealt with cyber security, the concepts (in the course) will not be easy."

The lecture hours and lab hours were restructured, Jabbour said. Cyber security practitioners were also brought into the classroom to tell students about what they did in the lab and why it is important.

"These measures gradually started to hit home," Jabbour said.