Virginia Tech® home

Solving the Cyber Workforce & Skills Challenges through Experiential Learning

Principal Investigator:

Brian Ngac, adjunct professor, instructor, information sciences and technology, George Mason University

Co-principal investigator:

Nirup Menon, professor, information systems and operations management, George Mason University

Solving the Cyber Workforce & Skills Challenges through Experiential Learning

Experiential learning can be used to provide students with hands-on training through real projects with industry participants, addressing a global shortage in skilled cybersecurity workers.

Industry participation helps students to be more marketable and effective in the workforce. Strategies include:

  • Recruiting students interested in the cybersecurity field.
  • Seeking industry experts to act as mentors.
  • Working with industry to design challenging and engaging cyber projects.
  • Guiding students through project execution in an agile environment.
  • Sharing student work and lessons learned with the CCI and global communities.

Our team has run experiential learning courses since Spring 2021, and our methodology has evolved to provide students an effective and enjoyable experience that can be leveraged for early career years.

Industry participants benefit by leveraging our talent pool for recruitment opportunities and by providing a cost-effective method to develop new/untested projects.

This project, among nine experiential learning projects funded for fiscal year 2022-23, is a part of CCI's strategy to provide students with industry experience and enhance their skill sets to better prepare them to enter the cybersecurity workforce.