HOW HAS INTRODUCING CYBERSECURITY LESSONS IMPROVED K9-16 PARTICIPATION IN YORK COLLEGE-HOSTED STEM PROGRAM?

The newly introduced cybersecurity lessons have resulted in increased participants due to rising student interest. Corporate funding from the AT&T enabled York’s STEM Program to devise lessons on three specific themes. 1) Technical Capabilities: Exploring tools and concepts which cybersecurity professionals may use to aid students who want to make this career choice. 2) Unconventional Perspectives: Inspiring creative thinking so that students can understand how exploits are discovered and fixed. 3) Strategic Reasoning: Encouraging students to think about the tradeoffs between access, usability and security, and reminding them that steps like securing their Wi-Fi or to avoiding clicking links in email to prevent phishing are low-cost high-reward practices. In addition, the early involvement of undergraduate and high school students in research training yielded fruitful outcome. Presentation of their summer research outcomes to professional organizations such as the Geological Society of America and American Geophysical Union-hosted annual meetings created a conducive academic environment for these students. Since 2015, York’s program has trained pre-service teachers, teachers’ aides, and geology undergraduates and offered the rare opportunity to attend and present their STEM research posters. This milestone can only be accomplished through well-coordinated planning during the summer months. It demonstrates a major fulfillment of imparting STEM education and validates the direct involvement and peer mentoring of K9-16 students in research. As many undergraduates and high school students are applying for summer internships, prior STEM experience is a desirable credential to better compete with their peers. In terms of gender, male and female students’ enrollment amounted to 60% and 40% respectively. Based on K9-12 participants, an increased junior and senior high schoolers will positively impact on the York’s STEM program by ensuring greater research productivity, an increased number of college-bound students with a STEM preference, and sustained growth of the program for years to come.