Iowa State University has received a National Science Foundation grant to provide scholarships to cybersecurity master’s degree students. (Photo courtesy of Iowa State University)
Iowa State University will provide scholarships to graduate students seeking a career in cybersecurity through a grant from the National Science Foundation.
The university announced in a news release that it is one of four colleges across the U.S. to receive a portion of $15 million in NSF grant funding for cybersecurity students planning to work for a local, tribal or federal government, or other qualifying organization.
ISU will use $3.7 million in grant funding over the next five years to provide 24 cybersecurity master’s program students with yearly $50,000 scholarships, according to the release, enough to cover tuition and a stipend. The scholarship program is called “CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: Training Iowa’s Cyber Talents to Protect the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure,” the release stated, and will officially launch in the fall.
“For nearly 25 years, the Scholarship for Service program has been addressing the nation’s critical shortage of cybersecurity professionals in the field,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan in a statement in the release. “This next cohort, focusing on cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, autonomous systems security, next-generation wireless, cybersecurity for smart manufacturing and more, is posed to make significant contributions to our national and economic security.”
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ISU Center for Cybersecurity Innovation and Outreach Director Doug Jacobson said in the release the university was previously part of the Scholarship for Service program for around 20 years before ending its participation to create an undergraduate cybersecurity engineering degree program.
“This is a competitive program,” Jacobson said in the release. “To get funding again says quite a bit about our program. In the first 20 years we were part of it, we produced more than 80 students who worked for the federal government.”
With the undergraduate program seeing around 180 students enroll annually, Jacobson said in the release it will help serve as a pipeline to the scholarship program if they continue with a cybersecurity graduate degree.
An abstract from the NSF grant program stated the scholarships will aid in preparing students to “enhance national security, address emerging threats, advance the cybersecurity field, and bolster the federal cybersecurity workforce,” as well as recruit from underrepresented groups, expand engagement opportunities and build partnerships in both business and academic industries.
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