and the Liberal Arts

BY ELIZABETH MURRAY ’13

Anew major at Saint Michael’s College, first offered in fall 2023, will help prepare students to enter one of the fastest-growing fields today: cybersecurity.

The major is Saint Michael’s first hybrid-learning undergraduate program, part of a new partnership between the College and a consortium of over 135 colleges and universities through Rize Education. Rize assists member colleges in providing online curricula to one another that prepare students for successful careers.

Although many upper-level cybersecurity-specific courses will be online through the consortium, on-campus faculty will still provide an educational foundation for students both in computer science and in the liberal arts. Cybersecurity majors will also be required to have a minor or a second major to complete the program.

“What this means is that cyber students will combine their specialty knowledge with greater depth in, say, psychology, or sociology, or Spanish—an additional perspective that will help them be more prepared to confront the complexities of future cyberthreats,” said Jeffrey Trumbower, Saint Michael’s vice president for academic affairs.

“Cybersecurity is not just a ‘technical’ major,” he added. “It deals with the complexities of human behavior and motivation.”

The Best Of Both Worlds

The new major gives students the opportunity to enjoy the individualized attention possible in the small, close-knit community at Saint

Michael’s while, at the same time, building a national network of people in the cybersecurity field before they’ve graduated.

According to Trumbower, cybersecurity students can expect to take less than 25 percent of their overall courses while at Saint Michael’s online through the consortium. The rest of their courses in the major, courses in their other major or minor, and their liberal arts core classes are taught in person by Saint Michael’s professors. The advisor for the program will also be on campus— computer science professor Greta Pangborn.

The online classes offered through Rize have been designed by some of the best educators and experts in the cybersecurity field—including professors from Penn State University and the University of Michigan and the founder and former CEO of AgileCode, for example. Students who choose to attend the classes as they’re being taught live will have students from other consortium schools as their classmates.

“It enables us to tap into expertise around the country in a field that’s so hot, it’s very difficult to hire and retain quality faculty,” Trumbower said. “This enables us to start small without a great deal of financial risk.”

Thinking Like A Hacker

Saint Michael’s has traditionally offered a Computer Science major, from which the majority of students have gone on to careers in software development. It has been less common for students to enter careers related to cybersecurity, Pangborn said.

Pangborn said that although she is the program’s coordinator, and the program is computing-based, it’s also important to understand that the Cybersecurity major is interdisciplinary. She uses the Association for Computing Machinery’s definition of cybersecurity in describing how she sees the curriculum for the new program:

“A computing-based discipline involving technology, people, information, and processes to enable assured operations in the context of adversaries. It involves the creation, operation, analysis, and testing of secure computer systems. It is an interdisciplinary course of study, including aspects of law, policy, human factors, ethics, and risk management.”

The program has two areas of focus that give students the skills to think like a hacker—finding weaknesses in existing computer networks and bolstering systems against any potential threats or attacks:

• Cyberthreat mitigation, or how to identify, neutralize, and stop threats from happening at the personal and corporate levels.

• Information technology fundamentals; effective cybersecurity depends on a solid foundation in information technology, especially as responsibilities in these areas often overlap or are combined in one job.

The new Cybersecurity major will also prepare students to gain important industry certifications, including the certified computer forensics examiner, certified ethical hacker, and certified information systems security professional certifications.

Looking Forward

Trumbower and Pangborn agree that the new major fits right in with Saint Michael’s motto of “doing well and doing good”—especially since Saint Michael’s students will have the ethical foundation to approach cybersecurity problems.

“The liberal arts core provides students with transferable skills in communication and critical thinking that are of great value in any career,” Pangborn said. “A quick look at the newspaper makes it clear that graduates in technology-related fields need to be prepared to address complicated ethical and policy issues.”

Trumbower knows at least one current student who is considering declaring a Cybersecurity major. Students in the incoming class of 2027 are already signing up for the program; as of mid-May, at least three students had enrolled in it, according to Saint Michael’s Office of Admission. Trumbower said these numbers are right on target for the program’s first year.

Administrators believe the program will continue to grow in popularity as time goes on.