- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little to develop free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students through new partnership with Arkansas Department of Education

Ajani Oyindamola — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 18:28:49 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will help create a free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students as part of a new partnership announced Dec. 9 at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s College of Engineering and Information Technology.�� The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Office of Computer Science will partner with ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, the Arch Ford Education Service Cooperative’s Virtual Arkansas division, and the University of Central Arkansas to develop a three-year cybersecurity curriculum and course pathway. This curriculum, which is set to begin in the 2020-21 school year, will support teachers and students through increasingly rigorous and relevant cybersecurity concepts leading to more Arkansas students being prepared for industry recognized certifications and to enter post-secondary cybersecurity programs. To support this partnership, ADE is providing $94,500. The grant is part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s coding initiative, which is funded with a $2.5 million annual commitment by the Arkansas State Legislature. “Once again, Arkansas’s educational institutions are demonstrating their commitment to providing our students with high quality educational opportunities that will prepare them for the job market they will soon be entering into,” Gov. Hutchinson said. “As our state moves forward in our computer science and computing initiative, we will remain focused on preparing our students for the high paying and open career opportunities that are out there like those in cybersecurity.” Arch Ford Education Service cooperative will subgrant $25,000 to the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Department of Computer Science and the Emerging Analytics Center to facilitate CyberGym existing module expansion and refinement and new module development as approved by the ADE Office of Computer Science.�� Vlog��ý Little Rock’s new CyberGym, an education and simulation model laboratory for cybersecurity learning hosted on the cloud, will provide educational materials for the first two years of the high school cybersecurity classes. The third-year curriculum will be provided by UCA’s Cyber Range. “The CyberGym has been developed by the faculty in computer science along with the team in the Emerging Analytics Center as a set of modules on a broad range of cybersecurity concepts that school teachers and students can then access to enhance their classroom experience,” ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Chancellor Christina Drale said. “With our partners here today, we are providing for all Arkansas K-12 schools a curriculum pipeline in cybersecurity that will provide the skills students need to be prepared for industry recognized certifications and to be prepared to enter post-secondary cybersecurity programs. Preparing Arkansas students for the jobs of tomorrow provides unlimited pathways for their futures.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock faculty members and students now work in ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s CyberGym. Photo by Ben Krain.

Arch Ford will subgrant an additional $25,000 to the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Department of Computer Science and the Emerging Analytics Center to provide payments to qualified work-study students to provide technical support and content development to Arkansas educators accessing the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock CyberGym system. Dr. Albert Baker, interim chair of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Department of Computer Science, said that more cybersecurity students are needed to fill the state’s growing demand for this high-paying field. Average starting salaries for cybersecurity jobs run from $90,000 to $125,000. With nearly 5,000 cybersecurity jobs in Arkansas, there are more than 1,000 that remain unfilled, Baker said. The new cybersecurity curriculum will be comprised of at least three courses that will provide students instruction in fundamental computer science; introductory through advanced cyber security concepts; online cybersecurity CyberGym modules using the power of Google’s cloud computing services; cybersecurity analyst and specialist tools; and relevant industry identified skills and knowledge expected in the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.�� These courses will be aligned to the ADE Information Security, ADE Advanced Information Security, and National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) standards and will support the students completing the pathway in being prepared to take and pass at least one industry recognized higher level cyber security certification (I.E., CompTIA’s Networking Plus, CompTIA’s Security Plus, CompTIA CySA+) and other interim certifications (I.E., CompTIA’s A+, Microsoft Technology Associate certifications) as deemed appropriate and approved by the Arkansas Department of Education. The courses will also be aligned to the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework,a national-focused resource that categorizes and describes cybersecurity work. “The greatest cyber-threat to national security is K-12 education,” said Kevin Nolten, director of Academic Outreach for the Cyber Innovation Center and the National Integrated Cyber Education Research Center. “Our responsibility as a state and as educators is to align both standards and curricula to cyber-based workforce roles to ensure that students are graduating high school with not only an awareness of cyber but the knowledge, skills and abilities to close the workforce gap that exists in cyber.”�� The ADE Office of Computer Science will collaborate with Virtual Arkansas and an ADE Office of Computer Science approved team of curriculum writers to develop the curriculum, which will include all the resources needed for a beginning computer science teacher to appropriately instruct students in this high-quality content by Aug. 1, 2020.�� Virtual Arkansas will assign a teacher and provide all courses developed under this agreement through its digital delivery platform beginning in the 2020-21 school year. Virtual Arkansas will also provide this curriculum for all courses in “content only” format at no charge to the school, the teachers, or the students. Virtual Arkansas will update the virtually delivered and “content only” curriculum as necessary in accordance with the ADE Information Security and NICE standards.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock, UCA announce Governor’s I-40 Showdown

Ajani Oyindamola — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 13:45:50 +0000

The athletic departments from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Central Arkansas announced the formation of the Governor’s I-40 Showdown, a rivalry series established to promote the spirit of in-state competition between the Little Rock Trojans and the Central Arkansas Bears while celebrating the athletic programs of both schools.�� “The Governor’s I-40 Showdown will produce a good-natured rivalry with well-earned bragging rights when the triumphant school brings home the trophy,” said Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. “The Showdown no doubt will boost interest in all 11 sports designated for the competition and will encourage the athletes by showing their fans are behind them. And this rivalry will give the universities another platform to promote their academic programs to recruit new students.” While these two Division I institutions, separated by just 30 miles, have competed against each other for decades, the newly-formalized rivalry will ensure the Bears and Trojans continue their rivalry in all sports that are mutually sponsored by both institutions. “This really promotes the spirit of in-state competition,” said Little Rock Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics��Chasse Conque. “It really promotes these two fine institutions and our athletic programs, but really our student-athletes. We promote the entire student-athlete and this gives us another avenue to showcase their successes.” “There are other Division programs in other states that do something similar, and we think it just makes sense,” said Central Arkansas Director of Athletics Brad Teague. “In-state competition just makes sense, and why wouldn’t we want to do this? It’s a big time announcement, and we’re proud of it.” As part of the Governor’s I-40 Showdown, Little Rock and Central Arkansas will compete on the fields of play each year across 11 sports. The Bears and Trojans will meet annually in baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s soccer, volleyball, men’s and women’s track and field, men’s and women’s cross country and men’s and women’s golf. Each head-to-head competition will have a pre-determined point value for the winning team. The university that accumulates the most points during the athletic season will have its name permanently engraved on the Governor’s Trophy – a traveling trophy that will reside on the reigning champion’s campus the following year. The Governor’s Trophy will be presented at the final competition between the two schools, which is the annual baseball game played at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock. The first head-to-head meeting between the two schools as part of the Governor’s I-40 Showdown will take place Friday, August 17, when UCA and Little Rock meet in women’s soccer at the Bill Stephens Soccer Complex in Conway. The two schools will go head-to-head in 10 different sports in 2018-19 with women’s basketball added to the rivalry in 2019-20.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock grad savors college experience close to home

Janea Snyder — Wed, 09 May 2018 08:35:30 +0000

Coming to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock was an easy decision for Betsy Van Dusen, who always knew she wanted to go to college close to home. At North Little Rock High School, Van Dusen had participated and excelled in the Environmental and Spatial Technology (EAST) Initiative. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock had the first and only collegiate level EAST program in the country, and Van Dusen was offered ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s highly competitive full-tuition EAST Scholarship. “It was an amazing opportunity,” she said, “and I knew it was the right decision.” Four years later, and Van Dusen will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology on May 12 in the Jack Stephens Center. She has been accepted into the University of Central Arkansas’ Clinical Mental Health Counseling program and starts this fall. After the two-and-a-half-year graduate program, Van Dusen will sit for exams to become a licensed professional counselor. “I was an anxious kid myself and have a special interest in working with kids and teenagers,” she said. When she started college, Van Dusen thought she wanted to be a teacher. “For the first year, I took Intro to Teaching, and I volunteered at a school for an afternoon program,” she said. Then, during her sophomore year, she took Dr. Robert ��Hines’ Cognitive Psychology class. “I always looked forward to the class, and realized I was really interested in it. I’ve always been interested in how people interact and why they think the way they do. I decided I can do a lot with this degree.” Van Dusen is also a member of Psi Chi, a national honor society for psychology students. She hadn’t planned to be a sociology major as well, but after taking several sociology classes, her advisor pointed out that she was three classes shy of having a double major. “Some of my hardest classes were in sociology, but I learned so much,” she said. Van Dusen has also had the dual experience of campus living and commuting. For the first two years, she lived in South Hall. “It was a good experience to have some freedom,” she said. “Living on campus, you can either sit in your dorm and be alone or get out and do stuff. For the EAST program, I was spending a lot of time with the other scholars and met many friends. It definitely made me put myself out there.” As an EAST Scholar, she was required to spend 15 hours per week in the lab, working on projects with other scholars. The Scholars annually exhibited work at the national annual EAST Initiative conference in Hot Springs. During her junior and senior year, Van Dusen chose to live at home to save money. She also has worked various part-time retail and restaurant jobs to ensure that she graduates debt-free. “That’s a great feeling,” she said. “I really have enjoyed ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. I’ve had some great professors and some challenging professors, but they all made it clear that they were here to help me.”

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little to develop free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students through new partnership with Arkansas Department of Education

����Vlog��ý Little Rock, UCA announce Governor’s I-40 Showdown

����Vlog��ý Little Rock grad savors college experience close to home

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little to develop free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students through new partnership with Arkansas Department of Education

��Vlog��ý Little Rock, UCA announce Governor’s I-40 Showdown

��Vlog��ý Little Rock grad savors college experience close to home