UT Tyler Professor Awarded Grant to Enhance Cybersecurity Workforce
September 9, 2020
UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications
UT Tyler Professor Awarded Grant to Enhance Cybersecurity Workforce
Follow @UTTyler TweetSeptember 9, 2020
Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
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The University of Texas at Tyler announced today that Dr. Kim Nimon, interim chair of the Department of Human Resource Development, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum that helps address the gaps in the cybersecurity workforce.
Nimon is working in collaboration with researchers at UT Dallas and the University of North Texas.
“As we rely more and more on technology in our day-to-day lives, cybersecurity is essential to combat threats from hackers. This research will ultimately help address the need for a more robust workforce of professionals with the broad knowledge to counter and prevent those attacks,” said Dr. Amir Mirmiran, UT Tyler provost.
There is a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, and while progress has been made in recent years, there is still an urgent need for professionals with competence in specialty areas such as artificial intelligence. Interdisciplinary education is becoming a necessity for most applications. Solutions often require not only cybersecurity expertise but also expertise in engineering disciplines and/or social, behavioral and management sciences, according to the research proposal.
“The goal of this research is to better understand how we can provide an interdisciplinary curriculum for a majority of areas and how we broaden access to cybersecurity education beyond the typical classroom courses,” Nimon said.
The current curriculum includes prerequisites for computer science courses, and what is unique about our project is that we plan to make these classes more accessible to an interdisciplinary crowd of graduate students, she added.
The project will develop five courses to help train graduate students in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence techniques being explored for cybersecurity. To address the challenge that some students won’t have the necessary prerequisites, the project will build in what’s called smart pedagogy.
“As a student is going through these courses and find that they don’t have the knowledge that they need, they will be diverted down a path to develop that knowledge. We call it just-in-time learning, and then they move back into the mainstream course,” said Nimon.
The research will examine if students can benefit from student-led learning as well as they can from instructor-led education. If so, the idea would be that the courses and content could be made available on the web for self-paced learning.
NSF is an independent federal agency created to promote the progress of science; advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and secure the national defense. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.
A member of the prestigious UT System, The University of Texas at Tyler focuses on student success and innovative research in the more than 80 undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered to nearly 10,000 students. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News and World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.