City University of Seattle (CityU) received a $700,000 grant to fund the NCAE-C Cybersecurity Highschool Innovation (CHI), which is a collaborative multi-state initiative.  

Together with a consortium of twelve National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C) from seven northwest states, CityU‘s Center for Cybersecurity Innovation will build a sustainable network to educate, train, and prepare high school teachers to instruct complete cybersecurity courses in their school districts. The goal of the grant is to encourage more students to consider cybersecurity as a career. 

“Our goal is to build a replicable model for teachers so that they can offer cybersecurity classes to ensure that we have more students going into this high-demand, essential career pathway,” said Morgan Zantua, Associate Professor and Director of CityU’s School of Technology and Computing. 

The consortium will recruit 70 high school teachers to learn cybersecurity content and principles online in 2021. Twenty-five teachers will attend an intensive summer institute in Seattle to kick off the program in September 2022, with an expansion of the program in the 2023 school year. 

A private-public partnership is planned to support this initiative. CHI will engage local, regional, and national companies, government agencies, and military-related organizations to support a self-sustaining network to increase the number of high school graduates entering the cybersecurity career pathway. 

 “We intend to create private-public partnerships to ensure that we can build a model that can continue beyond the life of the grant. I am encouraging all local and regional business, companies, and agencies to call us and get involved because these are their future employees,” said Morgan. 

The partner NCAE-C schools include Colorado’s Regis University, Oregon’s Mt Hood Community College, Montana’s Great Falls College and Missoula College, Idaho’s North Idaho College and University of Idaho, and Dakota State University, and North Dakota State University. Representatives from the University of Washington Bothell, Green River College, and Arapahoe Community College are represented by faculty operating through personal service contracts. 

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Since 1973, City University of Seattle has been relentlessly reimagining higher education in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. As an accredited, nonprofit university with over 20 years in online education, our mission is to provide career-relevant education to busy professionals and promote their educational and career success. Today, CityU of Seattle is recognized as a Top 10 educator of adults nationwide, offering over 60 degrees and certificate programs in business, leadership, education, project management, health and human services, and computer and information systems. Whether students study online or on-site, they gain marketable skills from practitioner faculty, and network with students and alumni employed at top companies such as Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Google.