Communications of the ACM
Csus Students Get Federal Scholarships to Become Tech Warriors
Pao Fang and 12 CSUS classmates will get about $25,000 in annual scholarships in exchange for helping the U.S. fight cyberthreats when they graduate.
Credit: Paul Kitagaki Jr./Sacramento Bee
California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) is offering $25,000 annual scholarships as part of the CyberCorps program for up to two years in exchange for service to the United States after graduation.
CyberCorps is administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation, and is part of the federal government's response to technology infrastructure threats. After students graduate, they will help protect the country from attacks on computer systems and critical infrastructure, such as the electrical grid, gas pipelines, and banks, says CSUS professor Isaac Ghansah.
At CSUS, scholarship students take courses in cybersecurity and spend their summers as federal interns. Following graduation, students are expected to find jobs with federal, state, or local agencies. The students practice hacking into simulated computer systems in search of weaknesses.
Part of the appeal of CyberCorps includes the challenges the program offers students, while others value it for access to government agencies that could offer them jobs following graduation.
The national CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service program started in the early 1990s and has produced almost 2,000 graduates nationwide, says CSUS CyberCorps director Behnam Arad.
From Sacramento Bee
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