 In 2020, Dr. Hamilton, we stole her from North Georgia. Thank you so much. In 2020, Dr. Hamilton joined Norwich University as the Associate Vice President for Strategic Partnerships, where she serves as the principal investigator for the National Security Agency, Senior Military Colleges Cyber Institute Grant Program, and also the Co-PI for the National Security Agency, Evidence and Competency Oversight Grant. So Dr. Hamilton initiated the Senior Military College Cyber Consortium in 2018 and helped the successful effort to actually get the language in the National Defense Authorization Act. Thank you, Colonel Hamilton. Thank you, Phil. So welcome. So if you're sitting out here in the audience, you're either studying cybersecurity, you're interested in cybersecurity, you've been affected by cybersecurity breaches or threats, or you're helping to support the effort. So thank you for being here today. The great thing about the position I'm in now is that I get to represent all six of the Senior Military Colleges for the Department of Defense Senior Military College Cyber Institute Pilot Program. And so we'd like to take a little bit of an opportunity here this morning to tell you about the program, to tell you the exciting things we're doing because this program builds on amazing cyberacademic programs already in place and provides experiential opportunities. What you heard General Skinner talk about is giving real experiences, opportunities in workplaces, understanding what work roles are out there while you're still a student so you can decide what you wanna do. And what we hope you decide is that you pursue a Department of Defense, civilian or military career. So we do this as a team and as you heard, cyber is a team sport and we do this with what we call the power of six. It's the six Senior Military Colleges, Norwich University, the Citadel, Virginia Tech, Virginia Military Institute, University of North Georgia and Texas A&M. And we've got representatives from all six of those schools here today, three of them up here on the panel. So next slide please. While they're bringing up that next slide, we'll go ahead and have our panelists give you a brief introduction. Good afternoon, good morning. Yep, good morning. My name is Chris Mitchner. I spent a majority of my career from 26 years in the military, started off as an infantry officer, then did some things behind there, the curtain if you will and then came back due to a series of unfortunate events, ended up in NSA Georgia having to relearn a career in cyber. Something that I thought was well beyond my means and I wasn't smart enough to do it, but after really hard work, ended up at US Army Space and Missile Defense Command doing the intelligence work for setting the grounds for the future of space and missile defense from a cyber perspective. Then I went and worked for NSA Georgia for a couple of years as a civilian and then took a job kind of running the East Coast operations for a group that wanted to invest in cybersecurity moving forward on the East Coast. And then I got the opportunity, a phone call from a former general officer, a friend of mine who told me this job was opening in North Georgia and I dropped everything and came back because again, I wanted to be the person that came back and helped the former me when I was there and I won't tell you the year. Linda. Good morning, I'm Linda Riddle. I am in the South Carolina Army National Guard. I've been in the National Guard for about 28 years. I've started off as an enlisted soldier. So pretty much my career in the Guard has been signal. So I'm a career signal officer. Just recently in 2020, I had the opportunity to go to the residential cyber war college, which is at the National Defense University at Fort McNair. So after that switched over into cyber, in the National Guard, I'm the brigade commander of our two to eight theater tactical signal brigade in South Carolina. That brigade has a signal battalion and we also have the cyber battalion. My last assignment with the National Guard before the G6 assignment is I was the battalion commander for our cyber battalion. So basically helped stood up that battalion and within six months we were mobilized. So very familiar with Fort Mead and the things that are going on there. When I'm not in uniform, I work full time at the Citadel. I've been off and on the Citadel campus for about 10 years. I'm the deputy director of our DOD Cyber Institute which Sharon talked about there at the Citadel. Started working there when we started the DOD Cyber Institute there in 2020. So great opportunity, I love this assignment at the Citadel because it allows me to put on my military hat when I need to and also engage with the students and help them in their cyber career. So great opportunity, thank you for having me. Chris. Good morning, I'm Colonel Chris Evans, Norwich class of 1988. I joined the Vermont Army National Guard in 1986 during my junior, the beginning of my junior year and I'm currently serving in my 36th year. In April I was selected to be the deputy director of the Norwich Cyber Institute which is part of the DOD Cyber Institute's program. Prior to this opportunity, I served as a chief information officer, G6 of the Vermont Army National Guard for seven years. In this capacity, I managed a section of the DODN which was mentioned earlier, the DOD Information Network. I managed it with 35 full-time cyber signal employees. One of the more exciting parts of my job was I managed a 10-man incident response team which the National Guard calls a defensive cyber operations element. And working with this team in many drills and cyber exercises, it really made me passionate about cyber security and cyber incident response. In 2020, we were activated by Governor Phil Scott to assist the University of Vermont Medical Network with a cyber attack that pretty much halted the healthcare for Vermonters. Our team was activated, we jumped in and we helped get the University of Vermont Medical Network back online. This basically, this was huge, this was a huge part of my career. It helped Vermonters get access, get medical access they needed and it was definitely one of the many highlights in my 36-year career. Being back here on campus teaching, teaching our amazing young leaders is definitely gonna be another highlight and I'm really excited to be back here on campus. I live in Montpelier with my wife and three boys. We live in a 200-year-old farmhouse so if you notice any paint or any construction debris on my uniform today, that pretty much explains it. Thanks, Chris. So that's three of the schools, but also represented here, we have John Walter from Texas A&M. John, if you could give a wave. Got Stephanie Travis from Virginia Tech and we've got David Jones from Virginia Military Institute. And so as you can see, for safety and other considerations, we travel as a pack. And it also answers the question of how many kernels it takes to do a panel. But what was most important for us back in 2018, as Phil mentioned, was to address a challenge. We knew there was a challenge in Department of Defense in getting enough young men and women graduating from universities to pursue cyber careers in Department of Defense, not just the uniform services. There is a huge critical need for Department of Defense civilian employees. And as General Skinner said, doing unique critical missions to this nation. So why the senior military colleges? Because the senior military colleges at the very core of their culture are about service to the nation. We're also about leadership and developing leaders. We're about that critical thinking that you heard was so important. And we had amazing cyber programs in place and you'll hear a little bit about that in a moment. So we got together and we got the authorization. But then with the amazing leadership of Senator Leahy, we got the appropriations because an authorization is great, but the money to be able to do a program is critical. And again, we came with a solution. We didn't go to the hill and we didn't ask our elected officials to give us a solution. We had a solution to bring six senior military colleges together, leverage our great academic programs and now add this very important layer of experiential opportunities. We want our graduates to be ready day one to work in Department of Defense. We want them to know how to work on a team. We want them to know how to think and to write to answer decision makers questions in very stressful environments. And so those are the opportunities that we provide in the cyber institutes at the senior military colleges. Next slide please. To accomplish this as a team, we determined initial goals for our program. As Linda mentioned, we had our first year in 2020. It was kinda lonely that first year because we didn't have students on our campuses. But that year for us was a capacity building year. It was bringing these great people on board to be the directors and the deputy directors of the cyber institutes at each of the schools. It was to bring on additional faculty so critical in that education process because the same people competing for faculty are competing with industry. We've got a limited resource. So what we decided was we had to develop a pathway. We needed a very clear way to demonstrate to Department of Defense that we could provide a pathway for our students so they would learn more about what those careers were. So they would gain experience. They would gain certifications. They would build a critical network leading them towards Department of Defense. Not requiring them to go into Department of Defense unless they're in an ROTC program, but leading them. And our program is about civilian students and military students. Our nation needs both to work the cybersecurity problems. And so what we did was determine that we were gonna do a pilot program. We're gonna show them we can do this. And if we can demonstrate to Department of Defense and most importantly to our three critical stakeholders who are the National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command and Department of Defense Chief Information Office, if we can demonstrate to those three critical stakeholders that we can expose our students to DOD opportunities and therefore increase the numbers who pursue those careers, then we've been successful. And so what we've done is developed a framework, the Cyber Leader Development Framework. And I'll talk very briefly about that in a moment. But the Cyber Leader Development Program Framework allows us to challenge students in a very systematic manner to experiences and to give them opportunities to step forward and to build the program as we're executing it because this is very much a student-centric program. So we're gonna prepare the students to work in Department of Defense work roles. And as you heard, I guess I'd already cornered General Skinner before his presentation to say one of the key places to do this is to get them in the workplaces. Any of you in industry know this also. If you can get those students into your workplaces, give them opportunities to learn the work role to decide if that's the culture for them and for you to decide if that's the person you want in your culture is very critical and important. Just as important in internships is the ability for the student to say, I don't wanna work this work role. This isn't of interest to me. And that's really important to learn so that they can take another path while still in school. And then finally, we needed to establish this and get it rolling. And so what you're gonna hear about today during the panel are these particular programs at University of North Georgia, the Citadel and Norwich replicated at the other three senior military colleges but allowing all of us to build programs based on our own unique cultures because you've got a private senior military college at Vermont all the way up in scope to Texas A&M. Next slide. But what we all agreed on was that we were gonna follow one framework. We're gonna follow the Cyber Leader Development Program. And by doing that, we're really developing six different programs. And if we're successful at the end of our five-year pilot program, the six schools represented here are gonna then go out to other schools and help them develop a Cyber Leader Development Program. And again, very key in our program is that word leader. We've got great technical skills and that's what we're teaching in the classroom. But what we need to teach to be ready for any workplace is how to be a leader and how to work on a team. And so our Cyber Leader Development Program establishes funding opportunities for students. It allows us to support students who want to pursue DOD cyber careers or are even interested or maybe who never heard about it and just wanna know more. This is your opportunity. And so each of the schools developed a cohort and provides funding for those students. You see the majors and minors designated up above. So it's not just for those students majoring in cybersecurity. They could be a business major, minoring in cybersecurity or computer science. They could be a criminal justice major. As long as they have a demonstrated interest academically in cybersecurity, they can join our programs. But what we require them to do upfront and they're getting ready to do on all the campuses is sign an agreement that says, I'll be part of the Cyber Leader Development Program. I know I'm gonna get these amazing opportunities and funded internships, stipends, scholarships and opportunities to go places but here's what I'm gonna have to do. I'm gonna have to apply for a DOD internship. I'm gonna have to actively pursue a DOD internship so I can understand what the workforce looks like. That's one and that's relatively simple you would think unless you have actually tried to work in USA Jobs and get an internship. So we provide training and guidance and we go over their resumes and we teach them the system because you can't just let people lose in USA Jobs. Then we ask them, you know what? A big part of being in this community is being a community. So you need to join a cybersecurity club or a study group. It's just as essential in their role as a student as their role in the Cyber Leader Development Program. We need that support, we want that networking and that's also where we bring opportunities. Guest speakers that becomes also the nexus of a lot of our cybersecurity competition teams are those in the group. And so we have cybersecurity clubs on each of the six campuses and on most of the campuses now we also have women in cybersecurity because a key element of the cyber institutes is to increase the diversity of the cyber workforce. And when we're talking diversity, yes, we're talking race and we're talking gender. We're also talking first generation students. We're talking different socioeconomic classes that may or may not have had the opportunity to even look at cybersecurity in high school. So we wanna get them interested and support them in their education. And it can also be those changing careers or veterans looking for a second career. We also say, okay, now you're in the club. Now you need to be part of competition team. Let's practice the skills in a fun way and a very competitive way. And you'll hear we've had some great success at several of these schools in our cyber competitions, Norwich included. So get out there and compete, go to conferences. We just all sent students out to DEF CON in Las Vegas. Yes, we funded students to go to Las Vegas. I was kinda happy to see all the rain last week because I thought maybe that would keep them off the strip. But opportunities like that because what they came back and have told us is I met people who are studying this at another school. I met people interested in what I'm learning. They wanna offer me opportunities. I did a lot of really amazing competitions while I was here and I just wanna do more. And it's that spark and that's what we talk about in our programs. If we can keep that spark going and growing through to graduation and on to successful careers then we've done our jobs in the cyber institutes. Our students all do cybersecurity projects and capstones. And we're increasingly linking those to the technical challenges of Department of Defense. And so there's currently a list out by Cyber Command and we'll be getting new lists focused on more of our students' activities and projects. And finally, leadership position. If you're in our cohort, you need to be put in a leadership position. If you're in an ROTC program, that's pretty simple. You're getting that. You're getting about 3,200 hours of leadership while you're in a senior military college core. But for the civilian students, it's providing them opportunities. So making them the leaders of our club. Giving them the opportunity to lead the competition teams. Working on events like this, any leadership opportunity to be able to plan, to be able to program, execute events, work with teams, call other schools, all amazing things that you need when you're gonna be successful in a workplace. So that's our Cyber Leader Development Program. And let me just stop for a moment here and I'm gonna ask some questions now of our amazing panel. So we'll start with Chris Mitchner from University of North Georgia. So tell us a little bit about the academic programs, cybersecurity academic programs at University of North Georgia. Okay, so University of North Georgia's awesome. Let's just establish that right now. And only because I'm a graduate and a little biased, but that's okay. And so are the other schools. But the, that sounded bad, I didn't mean it to be. He did, he did. No, no. So there, at the university, we focus largely on our cyber degree process within the forensics aspect. So it's largely a something has occurred. Okay, so let's go figure out what had happened, work ourselves backwards and then begin to mitigate and talk about mitigation issues and from a policy potential. So we're gardenering everything from the event and then turning it all the way back and then understanding the policy aspects that take us full circle from an event that occurred. So that's the forensics aspect. We're working with not only the FBI, the Secret Service and the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation with that specific program, but we've also got the AI and we're an artificial intelligence aspect of it. And then we've also got the network mapping. So it's from a defensive side network mapping to make sure again, we're understanding how things work, how the functionality are. And we are also working on those problems as Sharon mentioned from the DoD capstone perspective. The awesome thing about ours is that we also infuse the DoD critical languages into those degree processes. So the large potential for you to come to the university get grounded in a language while you're also getting grounded in cybersecurity and it's being demystified for you. Those are kind of the core competencies within the university. Thanks, Chris. Linda. So there's always this healthy competition, whether it's, you know, Army, Air Force, whatever, schools. So I'm glad I get to speak after Chris because I can talk about the Citadel and how great we are. So at the Citadel, basically within our cyber program, so we were in 2018 is when the Cyber and Computer Sciences program started at the Citadel. Before then it was the math and computer sciences department. So we broke off a little bit there in 2018. Citadel's in Charleston, South Carolina, a little bit smaller. So we've got about 126 students overall in our Cyber and Computer Sciences program, which is pretty awesome. One of the things that we offer there is a BS in cyber operations. So we do the computer science, but we also offer a BS in cyber operations. We started that in fall of 2020. It is the first institution of higher education in South Carolina that offers that degree. And really it aligns with the NSA's center of excellent standards. So the focus of that degree was really to figure out how do we operationalize this? Because easily we can put people within the industry, but what is the military looking for? We are looking for operators. And so really based on that is when we started that degree. So it's a hands-on application that focuses on cyber offense, which the students love. They love being able to do that on an offensive side. Cyber defense, cyber forensics, cyber law and policy, ethics, those types of things is what's incorporated into that degree. We also have an undergraduate degree in cybersecurity, cyber interdisciplinary studies. So again, at the Citadel, a lot of our classes are, you have to be there in person. We don't have a lot of online classes, a lot of them are in person. So great opportunity, lots going on there. One of the last things I'll mention is we're in the process of applying for the NSC Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations. So we'll do that for academic year 22, 23. Again, that's huge because it allows us to offer even more for the students and incoming freshmen that are coming to the college. With that, I'll pass it over to Colonel Evans. Well, Norwich University was where it all started. And I gotta say, I've only been here since April, so I'm just gonna hit the high points. So Norwich University has master's degrees or offers master's degrees in cybersecurity with six different concentrations. And those concentrations pretty much outline where our undergraduate focuses as well. We offer, those concentrations are project management, computer forensics investigation, incident response team management, critical infrastructure protection and cyber crime, cyber law and international perspectives on cyberspace and procurement and government contract management. That last one's a tough one. Yeah, but we have ventured there. Our two main bachelor's programs are computer science and computer security and information assurance. We also offer undergraduate minors and computer crime and forensics, computer science, applied data science and information assurance. Okay, awesome. Can you go back one slide? So as you heard, mentioned the NSA, National Centers of Academic Excellence for Cybersecurity is a program that's been around for 15 years. Norwich was one of the first on that too. But that's working with NSA on a national level program to ensure that we are teaching those skills and those programs that the nation needs. And so our faculty and our curriculum and our activities are all vetted very stringently. And most of us just went through our redesignation for that program. But what it does is it sets apart at this point, 350 schools in the US are the only ones designated as NSA Centers of Academic Excellence for Cybersecurity. And five of the six senior military colleges have been designated for quite a while and the sixth one is working on its candidacy. So that's great for us. So since each of your schools is already designated by NSA, let's talk now about what you're doing in the cyber institutes. Because we built on what we had from NSA. So let's talk about experiential programs. And what experiential programs are you offering within your cyber institutes and your cyber leader development program? And we'll start with Linda. Okay. So at the Citadel, the way that we're structured with our cyber leadership development program is basically, just like Sharon said, our objective at the Citadel is we want our students to not just get an education, right? Everybody's gonna do that when they graduate, but we want them to be able to start working on day one. So when they cross that finish line, they're able to go into a job. So in order to really make that happen, we really have to focus in on making sure that they have an internship that's gonna give them the experience that's needed. So we are in Charleston and we're really co-located. We're there in Charleston with the NAWIC, the Naval Information Warfare Center. I mean, I mentioned that because that's a great opportunity that our students have had. We've had seven internships through that agency for our students. So we've had internships with NSA. We've had internships even with MITRE or another industry because again, it's the focus of trying to get those students involved in those internships. So the way that we're built at the Citadel, we have a deputy director of, we have a director. Dr. Bannick is our director. He is the department head for our Cyber and Computer Sciences department. We have a deputy director of academics. Really that focus is making sure that our students are aligned academically with what's needed in the workforce. And then we have my job as the operations and outreach. So basically really making sure that we go into the schools. So another part of that is making sure that our 20 students, so we have 20 students that are part of our cohort and making sure that those 20 students are mentors. So we have mentors that come in and speak with our students and we have a 101 engagement with industry. We participate in outreach activities, a lot of competitions as Sharon mentioned already. I mean, we're all the schools are doing all the same competitions. One of the things I'll mention, we have a cyber lab with a net lab plus framework. And what that does is, I teach one of the cybersecurity courses is allows our students to get that hands-on experience because the only way that they're gonna do that is through that type of network lab situation. So it allows our students to get some hands-on experience that way. So when they go to the competitions, when they're doing their internships, they have some familiarity just not only in the classroom. One of the things that we've done is we've started a cyber bootcamp for the National Guard at the Citadel. This is our second year of doing that because just like in any other agencies, the National Guard's active duty, we all have a requirement to make sure that soldiers have that basic understanding of security plus, network plus, pentest plus, all those different things. So through this grant, we were able to really kind of host, we hosted 28 soldiers that are in the National Guard. We opened it up also to our State Guard. A lot of that I've heard you guys may call at your defensive guard, but basically it's volunteers. So we opened up five seats to our State Guard as well. Last year, we focused on pentest plus and security plus for two weeks. This year, we only did one week because it gets to be a lot. So we did one week bootcamp of security plus. We were able to also, after that one week, give them the vouchers that they needed to actually go and sit for the certification, which is huge. So to have that opportunity that they could actually go sit for that certification is huge because I always tell people when you train the Guard, you're training the community because those soldiers are gonna go back into the community. Also, it's a great opportunity for our students to also have that relationship as well. One of the things that we've done is our K-12 program. So this is actually through Facebook in my neighborhood. Someone said, hey, don't you do some cyber stuff? I'm like, yeah, a little bit. So I went back to school. And so basically through one of our local high schools, which is about 10 minutes down the street from where I live, we were able to actually send one of our cyber students that's in our program to work with that high school. That student was able to go into that high school and mentor that Air Force JRTC program and actually really been able to take them to a level to where they actually competed and they actually won. So it's great opportunity, not only for our students in the military, but also within the community. So I could go on and on about our programs at the Citadel, but I'll give these guys a chance to also talk, but it's great opportunity and what we're doing there at the Citadel. Okay, thanks Linda. All right. So the Norwich University Cyber Institute is led by Dr. Mike Battak, and he is supported by Kelly Sutton-Bosley and myself. So I mentioned earlier, I arrived here in April and I pretty much fell in on an established program that's doing really exciting things for our students and faculty. Two of the amazing programs that I recently observed were the cyber research and undergraduate studies or Syrup is the acronym, Syrup, we call it. We did that in the spring and that's usually when we make our syrup for you non-New Englanders. And then I observed the cyber summer immersion or CSI program in July. Both of these cyber institute supported programs brought students from all the senior military colleges to conduct cutting edge research projects here at Norwich University. The Syrup students researched and briefed independent topics such as the use of machine learning and code clones and malware classification and multi-variable optimization of point and polygon clustering for assignment prioritization through machine learning. Wow. One of my favorites was a more basic concept, a rogue axis point deployed by drone and how to defend against it. This conference was a huge success and it was really great to watch the cadets from the other senior military colleges in Norwich, collaborate and support each other to make the event better next time. The summer or the cyber summer immersion program, the students were presented with a well-crafted intelligence scenario and an information warfare mission. The mission was to utilize artificial intelligence, deep fake technology to produce an effect. In this case, it was a video to influence a political outcome. To observe the intensity and purpose in these research teams is really inspiring. Their final projects impressed a very experienced panel from both our federal and industry partners. So both of these programs alone made me really proud to be part of the Cyber Institute's program and they're just the tip of the iceberg. A cornerstone, which Sharon talked about is the Cyber Leadership Development Program. I wanted to highlight a few opportunities that we have that Norwich has available to our CLDP cohort. We have internships at our security situation center here on campus. This is a Norwich University applied research institute run security operations center. It's a SOC basically and it's a real-world, real-time SOC that analyzes and defends the state of Vermont's information network. Our students get experience in this and it's a really awesome opportunity. We also have multiple research internships on campus including work in information operations, personal tracking, augmented reality, ethical hacking, forensics and information warfare. We've recently done a trip to DEF CON, we've done other trips to Army Cyber Command, threat casting event and Army Cyber Command training down at West Point. We offer a summer language immersion program and as was mentioned earlier, industry certifications which are huge. The Cyber Institutes also supports our cyber clubs, faculty development training and our K through 12 outreach to include the cyber rangers, Norwich University's NCX team and the infrastructure to support our cyber teams. They fund introductory experiences for local high schoolers on campus, providing guidance as high schoolers work through digital forensics investigations and introducing them to the Norwich University program of cyber security. They support our student faculty involvement in the Hackers Club and the Raspberry Pi challenge in our local school system and they also fund memberships for students for students and faculty members in organizations like ACM and women in cyber security. Thanks Chris. Okay. So we built a several pipeline type of mission and the first one is the K through 12 and I'll just give you one example and that is we paired with the Sands Institute for the state of Georgia and offered to take it on to get and focus on that K through 12 education level. And as it stood, we went through last year and the state of Georgia won the Sands Institute nationwide for the state of Georgia and then subsequently that provided scholarships and opportunities from the Sands Institute that were given to the university. Phenomenal program and it starts again getting into that K through 12 education system. Also, I've spoken with several business leaders from downtown Atlanta and they are also looking at kind of the technical college route to get people into those high speed jobs. I have asked them, hey, what's the outcome? What do you expect to get? And they said, hey, we're looking for people who can come out of high school and can immediately go in and start building a platform, working a platform, getting certifications. And I said, hey, that's great. However, you're now hamstringing that young man or that young woman because what's the next step? What's the next value of an education that they're going to get? They're always going to be on a keyboard. They're always going to be doing those things. Let's not do that. Let's now begin to look at university. I don't care if it's a university in North Georgia, Vermont, or I'm sorry, Norwich, Citadel. I don't care. Let's start looking at an education system that develops young men and women past the K through 12. So those are just some of those things there. We also look inside the university. As I'm sure we're having the problems across the Citadel and Norwich we are now hemorrhaging faculty. In my second year here within this program, we have started to now focus on faculty to get them up and running and have some investment in their certifications, investment in their capabilities so that can come back to the young men and women. And then also outside. And I'll cut this short and I will tell anybody here from the state of Vermont who's not associated with Norwich, I'm gonna shame you a little bit and that is if you don't have a young man or young woman sponsored from this university, you need to. You need to reach down into Mike Battick or Chris and find a young man or woman so that you can help them develop over time in a discipline that makes sense and so they can understand your business model, how to become better. And I'll just leave it at that but it's kind of a down and in and inside the university and then an outside the university approach is how we have taken it across our institute. So what you've heard are some incredible examples and these are things all funded through the Cyber Institute Grant that came to us through appropriations and again thank you to all the elected officials from the five states that the SMCs are in but led by Senator Leahy. At this time I think we might have time for maybe one or two questions because we've got a lot of information we can share you can tell we get passionate about what we're doing because we believe in this mission. So audience members in the auditorium if you'd like to go up to the microphone and ask a question and live stream you can email your questions to cybersymposiumatnorwich.edu and they'll be read out loud. So we welcome any questions and we'll also be here all day along with our three partners in the audience. Morning. Thank you for all the information. I'm here at Norwich University as an assistant professor in cybersecurity and my question to you is we've obviously established the role of Norwich University in this program but thanks to you all across our senior military colleges for all the work that we're doing what are the challenges that you faced in terms of maybe resources or how do you look to expand this program in the future since it's been as we know here and I'm as I'm hearing with you all very successful. Does someone wanna address the challenges? Yeah I will tell you right now one of the challenges as I kind of mentioned before we have 400 students in the cyber degree process right now at the University of North Georgia and right now I am losing to industry because right now Atlanta and north of Atlanta is becoming the fintech capital of the world and I now have people calling me on a daily basis looking for juniors who have skill sets in a certain demand and then I'm like hey you go away, there's the door, don't let it hit you on your way out because I tell students hey don't fall for that. If you fall for that you're gonna be behind a keyboard get your degree and then you can run 10 of those people when you graduate. However if you go into the Department of Defense oh by the way that education is paid for oh by the way you have now leadership experience oh by the way now you might have a clearance oh by the way you might have developed other things over time and oh by the way give back to your country. Start there, be a positive dementia or a positive person starting off. That's kind of the challenge that I'm having. I'll just say real quick I think the challenge that I see is that it is a Department of Defense cyber institute program and it's been hard to fill those slots within DoD because sometimes I'm not sure where to even look. I'm like I've got the students, I know that there's opportunity out there amongst DoD but so I'm really grateful that Sharon reached out to General Skinner to kind of get something going but there's so many agencies out there we've got students you know and I need to find slots for them so that's the challenge so what I find is I've got to really engage, I've got to look for opportunities but I'll also teach the students when you're at competitions you're always being interviewed, someone's always looking. So it's the challenge of we've got students, I know there's opportunity out there, how do we bridge that gap to make sure that we meet those opportunities and put students in the right places. Okay and Chris we're gonna, I think we've got another question and then we'll let you answer this next question. Yeah. Hi I'm Matt Bovey, I'm also a professor here at the now proudly the Leahy School of Cybersecurity and Advanced Computing. I wanted to add one thing to Chris's list and then I have a question for you as well. We also at Norwich have a functional operation center called the Cipher, the Center for Cybersecurity and Forensics, Education and Research. It's something that any student can join and begin to learn the skills that go on at a functional IT center. The center performs operations for classes and for research for the university at large and somebody could walk in the door and be completely ignorant about this stuff but excited and they can be taught and mentored by other students who gradually gain management skills at higher and higher levels until they're a senior running other students who are themselves managing at a more junior level project related issues and it's something that you don't get at even at many institutions you don't get your hands on that sort of stuff as a master's student let alone as an undergraduate. So just to polish that particular apple with that one tiny bit more. And then the question for the panel is are you interacting collectively as the CLDP and the institutes running it to place students from one institution in an internship nearby at another state. I don't want to take away from the opportunities here to place students in Vermont because heaven knows we need them just as much as anyone else does but students are probably gonna find it more comfortable to be something that might be supportive of them being nearby in their region. So a student here at Norwich might be from the Georgia area and be more amenable to an internship there. So are we interdigitating or collaborating between the different institutes to help place people that way? Okay, I'm gonna take a stab at that one. So yes, but this is the DOD, Senior Military College Cyber Institute. So the focus of our internships is on DOD jobs to address Dr. Provost's question before on what's the next step. The next step is to then partner with other universities. So Norwich will partner with other universities in Vermont to help you set this up. But again, the focus will be on Department of Defense. But we have opened up internships that are funded in this to other states. And so this summer for the information warfare internship, we had students I think from four or five different states taking part in working a problem set, information warfare on a Department of Defense problem set. So we are reaching out but this is Department of Defense focused. Thank you. Thank you very much for the panel on the Senior Military College's DOD Cyber Institutes.