By Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration

From a data breach at MGM Resorts costing the company an estimated $100 million to a cyberattack at Clorox causing major disruptions to operations, cyberattacks are a growing threat and worries about vulnerabilities are palpable. Some 74% of CEOs are expressing concern about their organization's "ability to avert or minimize damage to the business from a cyberattack," according to an Accenture survey.

The public sector is also a major target. Cyberattacks against government agencies rose 40% between March and May of this year compared to the prior three months, finds Blackberry's Global Threat Intelligence Report.

As employers race to fortify their organization's cybersecurity, they're depending on a workforce with a shortage of workers. Currently, there are more than 660,000 cybersecurity job openings, with just 69 trained workers available for every 100 of those jobs.

A Nationally-Recognized Cybersecurity Program in an Unexpected Location

To close that gap, colleges and universities are playing a crucial role in building cybersecurity talent pipelines.

That includes California State University-San Bernardino (CSUSB), a public university that serves more than 20,000 students annually and graduates about 4,000 students each year.

San Bernardino County is the largest county in the contiguous United States and is roughly the size of West Virginia. Its population is just around 2.2 million, with more than 53% of the residents Hispanic.

CSUSB - situated in the city of San Bernardino - offers more than 70 traditional B.A. and master's degree programs, education credential and certificate programs, and a doctoral program.

Among the academic pathways is a nationally-recognized cybersecurity program within the Department of Information and Decision Sciences (IDS) at its Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration. The program offers six undergraduate degrees and seven master's degrees with cyber components, along with some certificate programs, in which students learn how to anticipate and defend against cyberattacks.

Since the early 2000s, the academic program has been designated as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity for Cyber Defense (CAE-CD) by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

According to the agencies, "CAE manages a collaborative cybersecurity educational program with community colleges, colleges, and universities that:

• Establishes standards for cybersecurity curriculum and academic excellence,


• Includes competency development among students and faculty,


• Values community outreach and leadership in professional development,


• Integrates cybersecurity practice within the institution across academic disciplines,


• Actively engages in solutions to challenges facing cybersecurity education."

CSUSB's prominence as a cybersecurity educator belies assumptions about prestigious cybersecurity training hubs only being found in Silicon Valley or in close proximity to the nation's capital.


"We can't be selective and think that everything is going to come from the Bay Area or the Beltway. We need to show that there is talent, and you just have to know how to reach the talent," says Tony Coulson, Ph.D., a professor in the program and the execute director of the Cybersecurity Center (CSC) at CSUSB.


"Most schools offer one program and call it cyber. We've thought outside the box," he adds.


For example, a certificate is offered in cybersecurity and criminal justice. "The way we work is we have to find talent where it is and that might be in criminal justice. Name a crime these days that doesn't involve a cyber component?," says Coulson.


A key piece of CSUSB's approach, says Coulson, is listening to what employers need. And it works with a number of them, including the NSA, DHS and the National Science Foundation on the government side.


Private employers include Google, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Bank of America, and many others.


These partners help shape the curriculum and many of the employers have gone on to hire the school's graduates.


Providing Access and Affordability


Building a diverse workforce and advancing social mobility is key to the university's goals.


"This is part of our commitment to access and affordability - especially access in this case - and our commitment to educate a really diverse workforce," says Tomás Gómez-Arias, Ph.D, dean of CSUSB's Brown College. "We have a very large minority student population, which to a large extent reflects the area and the region where we live and the region we serve. Over two-thirds of our students are Latinx."


Gómez-Arias says to attract cybersecurity talent from within the community, programs are designed to meet students where they are at.

"Very often in technical disciplines what we find is there is a very leaky pipeline. There are many points in the process, especially for underserved populations to drop out," he explains.


To attract and retain students, the university adds entry points at various levels of education. "We work with middle school students. We work with high school students. We work with community college students. And at all those points, there are ramps to get into the discipline and into our programs," Gómez-Arias explains.


The goal is to provide career opportunities in a field that's expected to grow by 32% by 2032, with earnings potential for six figure salaries. The median pay for an information security analyst, for example, is $112,00 a year and usually requires a bachelor's degree.


CSC provides cybersecurity students with unique learning environments that help accelerate their growth inside and outside of the classroom. To advance these goals, CSC partners with employers in hopes of creating more apprenticeship programs aligning with employer needs.


"Oftentimes universities are pegged with 'We're the ivory tower and we think we know all of it.' But what we do here is listen. We listen to the students. We listen to the employers. We listen to people of authority and experts. And we ask where it is going," Coulson explains.


"And as Wayne Gretzky famously said when he was asked why he was such a great hockey play - and I will paraphrase him - 'Because I skate to where the puck is going, not to where the puck is.'"


Free Tuition and a Job After Graduation


For students, these university-employer partnerships also provide incentives. A key one through CSC is scholarship opportunities - Scholarships for Service - in which students receive two years of tuition and are required to work after graduation for up to two years at a government agency.


That's something Anette Vladescu views as an advantage. The CSUSB alum received a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems and Technology with a focus on cybersecurity in 2021. She says knowing a job was waiting for her after she graduated wiped out worry.


"It was definitely nice to know that there was something there. That got my foot in the door a lot easier than if I had to job hunt myself and try to find it myself," explains Vladescu. She is now a cybersecurity engineer at a government agency, describing her job as making sure systems are designed with cybersecurity in mind.


She credits the technical skills she learned at CSUSB for preparing her for her role. And she notes the important soft skills she learned by joining a club at school known as CISO, the Cyber Intelligence and Security Organization. Vladescu says her participation honed her presentation skills.


"Cybersecurity can be very abstract. It's not something you can really see or touch that easily. So, it became necessary to be able to explain that to people who weren't cyber-oriented and who weren't technology-oriented. So, I definitely got a lot of practice out of that when I was at San Bernardino," she explains.


Fellow Class of 2021 alum Jessica Villavicencio echoes the importance of learning opportunities outside of the classroom at clubs like CISO. She now works as an IT cybersecurity specialist focusing on policy at a government agency to which she won a scholarship. She sees firsthand the demand for people with her skills.


"In my own individual career path, there are doors opening every day - it feels like every day - and it's crazy to think about because for me it's too many options. But in cybersecurity in general, it's never going to go away," says Villavicencio.


She is back at CSUSB as a graduate student pursuing a master's degree and notices a big difference in demographics since her days in the lab there.


"It would be like 100 people in this room and for there to only be about 15 women. It was definitely a little intimidating at times. I will say going back for my master's and I'm looking at like a solid 40-60 split now, or even sometimes 50-50 split of who's in the lab. I'm like, 'wow, a lot has changed,'" stresses Villavicencio.



Ramona Schindelheim wrote this article for WorkingNation.


get more stories like this via email

Registration is open for the next information session for the Doswell School of Aeronautical Sciences at Texas Woman's University in Denton, where students accepted into the program will study to earn their pilot's license.

The school is the only woman-focused university nationwide with a professional pilot's program.

Clinton Grant, director of the school, explained the program.

"Once they go through all of the steps to get into the program and the semester starts within a week or so they're in an airplane flying," Grant noted. "It's not something they have to wait later as their junior (or) senior years before they get into it. We start them as quickly as we can. So it's a lot of fun."

The program is limited to 25 students in the fall and spring semesters. The next information session is April 11.

During the information session, Grant pointed out he tries to weed out the students who may not be serious about becoming a pilot. In addition to tuition and fees the cost of flight training could exceed over $100,000 and it can take up to seven years to earn a pilot's license.

"Most flight students, they'll become flight instructors," Grant observed. "They turn around and start teaching students to fly and that's how they build their hours. And then once they reach a certain amount of hours they'll be eligible to be employed by a regional carrier."

The aeronauts program is still in its infancy. The first classes were held in the fall of 2024. Grant added as they grow, they will have more options for students.

"We're going to get into some of the air mobility things as well as operations management or aviation management," Grant outlined. "There's a demand in the area for that. So, we will be heading in that direction next."

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


get more stories like this via email

A strike set to begin today has been averted at Western Michigan University, Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine, known as WMed.

Its resident physicians reached a tentative deal with the medical school last week.

For nearly eight months, about 200 residents and fellows had been negotiating for improvements in working conditions, including higher salaries and stipends, and more time off.

Mitchell Batchelder - an organizer and field representative with the Resident and Fellow Alliance, the union representing the residents - said the strike notice seemed to prompt a greater willingness from WMed management to reach an agreement.

He emphasized several key aspects of the deal.

"They secured a three-year contract with guaranteed wage increases in each year," said Batchelder. "They got a meal stipend - you know, they're working 24-hour shifts and they need access to fresh, healthy food in order to bring their best while they're working those 24 hours."

He added that the agreement marks a historic milestone as the first private-sector medical resident contract in the state of Michigan.

Batchelder also stressed the impact such a contract could have on W-Med's future, as well as the community.

With this agreement in place, he predicted the institution will not only retain its current top-tier residents, but also attract new talent.

"From a long-term perspective, for these hospitals in Kalamazoo and for the community, this is a really, really great thing," said Batchelder. "Because it can be really hard sometimes to retain and attract qualified health care professionals. And I think this allows them to have an even stronger pitch to those folks."

Batchelder said he believed this private sector deal could also have a significant national impact on unions and labor laws - highlighting what he describes as the imbalance in current regulations.

He noted that many U.S. labor laws are structured in a way that tends to favor employers.



get more stories like this via email

This has been "National March Into Literacy Month" but it may become tougher over the summer to "march" into a public library and ask for help finding a good book.

An executive order signed this month by President Donald Trump requires staff and funding cuts to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency funding libraries across the country.

One in five Maryland adults has low reading skills, according to the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and 36% of fourth graders read below grade level.

Sandy Keaton, 2025 conference chair for the State of Maryland Literacy Association, said building reading skills can start in the home and parents play a large role in their kids' reading journey.

"The best way to promote literacy is for you to be a reader and for your children to see you being a reader," Keaton emphasized. "The second thing I would say would be to read with your child. You can have him or her read a page to you, then you can read a page. You can have him or her read the entire page."

Nationally, Maryland's literacy rate is in the middle of the pack among states, at 28th.

The library cutbacks come as the National Center for Education Statistics found national reading scores had their largest decline in more than 30 years. Those declines were worse for already low-performing students.

For adults, Keaton suggested starting with a book you like or that is about one of your interests, and go from there.

"If they wanted to continue to build on that knowledge, there are so many exhibitors and vendors that have books that not only will help younger children but will also help the adults," Keaton added.

Keaton recommended librarians as a great resource for all ages to get into reading. They are trained to help people pick books to match their reading level and interests.


get more stories like this via email