Cybersecurity and Data Science Curriculum for Secondary Student Computing Programs

Volume 14, Issue 2 (November 2023), pp. 6–9

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@article{jocse-14-2-2,
  author={Richard Lawrence and Zhenhua He and Dhruva K. Chakravorty and Wesley Brashear and Honggao Liu and Sandra B. Nite and Lisa M. Perez and Chris P. Francis and Nikhil Dronamraju and Xin Yang and Taresh Guleria and Jeeeun Kim},
  title={Cybersecurity and Data Science Curriculum for Secondary Student Computing Programs},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2023,
  month=nov,
  volume=14,
  issue=2,
  pages={6--9},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/14/2/2}
}

Computing programs for secondary school students are rapidly becoming a staple at High Performance Computing (HPC) centers and Computer Science departments around the country. Developing curriculum that targets specific computing subfields with unmet needs remains a challenge. Here, we report on developments in the two week Summer Computing Academy (SCA) to focus on two such subfields. During the first week, 'Computing for a Better Tomorrow: Data Sciences,' introduced students to real-life applications of big data processing. A variety of topics were covered, including genomics and bioinformatics, cloud computing, and machine learning. During the second week, 'Camp Secure: Cybersecurity,' focused on issues related to principles of cybersecurity. Students were taught online safety, cryptography, and internet structure. The two weeks are unified by a common thread of Python programming. Modules from the SCA program may be implemented at other institutions with relative ease and promote cybertraining efforts nationwide.