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4 Keys to Creating an Accessible PIT Program
by Chon Abraham and Iria Giuffrida, William & Mary
Cybersecurity
July, 2023
Author: Dr. Chon Abraham is the Mansfield Professor of Business in the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her research and teaching involve cybersecurity-related topics, business intelligence, data management, and health information management.
Author: Dr. Iria Giuffrida is a professor of the practice of law and the assistant dean for academic & faculty affairs at William & Mary Law School. Her research focuses on legal issues arising from the increasing use of artificial intelligence, the rapid growth of the Internet of Things, and related emerging technologies. She is involved in grant-funded experiential projects aimed at creating a diverse talent pipeline for the cybersecurity industry.
Public interest technology (PIT) aims to create training and career pathways that are accessible to people historically excluded from technological fields. This sounds great in theory. But at a practical level, how do you do it?
With the support of a 2021 PIT-UN Challenge Grant, we created a cybersecurity training program at William & Mary that offers experiential learning opportunities to students from diverse racial, gender, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In its first year, the program trained 20 college students and 10 high school students through paid experiential learning and mentorship in partnership with the workforce development platform iQ4.
In a post-course survey, 70% of respondents identified as female and over 50% identified as racial or ethnic minorities. Nearly three-quarters (74%) said that at the start of the program, they did not feel confident they could work in cybersecurity; we were thrilled to see that not a single one of these same respondents said they felt the same by the end of the program, and in fact 78% reported interest in pursuing further training.
Coming off a successful first year, we’re excited to share four keys to creating accessible PIT programs to help our fellow educators and administrators reach more diverse student populations and create powerful learning experiences to set them on track to pursue careers in technology.
1. Pitch Your Program in High-Trust Spaces
Because technology fields generally lack diversity, women and minority students often assume that courses in cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence, and similar fields simply aren’t for them. The venue in which they learn about opportunities matters a great deal, and affinity groups, college success programs, or student life initiatives designed specifically for those populations provide spaces where these students — so often in the minority — feel safe and encouraged to explore new possibilities.
At William & Mary, we conducted informational sessions and recruited students through WMSURE, a support program designed to offer research opportunities for undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds.
Off-campus, we partnered with high school guidance counselors to recruit local students. While we can certainly reach a wide range of students through digital communication platforms, there really is no substitute for in-person relationships and interactions to drum up interest in new and unfamiliar opportunities and to encourage students to reach for experiences outside their comfort zones.
2. Speak to Students’ ‘Why’
Given the costs of higher education, students often want to see the value in a field before they commit to taking courses in an unfamiliar field.
What many of them don’t realize at the outset is that technological literacy is valuable for any career, whether in business, law, education, government, or nonprofits. A basic understanding of how to keep oneself and one’s organization safe from cyberattacks, for example, is a great selling point to employers from all industries.
Articulating the value of your program for a variety of majors and fields will speak to students’ interests. And if the survey results from our first cohort are any indication, your program can be a gateway into a technology-related major or career for students who otherwise might not see themselves as technologists
3. Find an Industry Partner
Nearly all of our survey respondents reported that the prospect of an internship offering practical — and paid — work experience increased their interest in the program.
While we technically could have arranged paid internships through our institution’s career office and our own personal industry connections, partnering with iQ4 alleviated what would have been a vast amount of administrative labor, allowing us to focus on augmenting the curriculum and working closely with our students.
Crucially, iQ4 offered not only internships, but also industry mentors. The value of having diverse mentors from the cybersecurity industry work directly with our students cannot be overstated. In addition to their subject matter expertise, the mentors shared their passion for cybersecurity and insights into how they have navigated and succeeded in predominantly white and male industries. Learning with peers and from mentors who have similar backgrounds and face similar challenges was a very strong motivator for our students.
4. Build Relationships Off-Campus
Academia has a reputation — sometimes false, sometimes true — for being behind the curve. While we shouldn’t be led by industry, we should be responsive to industry trends and what skills employers are looking for in job applicants. Insights from local cybersecurity practitioners were valuable for us in designing a curriculum that prepared the students to succeed in their internships.
As we’ve sought to recruit local students from outside of William & Mary, relationships with leaders in nearby public education schools have been crucial. We’ve found that high school guidance counselors are more than willing to send students our way so long as we consistently stay in touch throughout the year and offer very clear information about program deadlines, time frames, and value for students, to make it simple and straightforward for these very time-stretched educators.
Connecting with local school board members has also opened doors to state and local programs focused on tech accessibility; and connecting with the leader of the Virginia Tribal Education Consortium allowed us to reach students from nearby reservations.