CyberPDX: A Camp for Broadening Participation in Cybersecurity

With society’s increasing dependence on technology infrastructure, the importance of securing the computers, networks, data, and algorithms that run our digital and physical lives is becoming critical. To equip the next generation of citizens for the challenges ahead, an effort is underway to introduce security content early in a student’s academic career. It is important that these efforts broaden participation and increase diversity in the field. While many camps and curricula focus on introducing technical content and skills related to cybersecurity, such approaches can prematurely limit how students view career opportunities in the field, potentially limiting those who ultimately pursue it. In addition, it is likely that many problems in cybersecurity can only be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner by those trained in the arts and humanities as well as in technical fields.

This paper describes CyberPDX, a residential summer camp that introduces cybersecurity to high school students. Key to CyberPDX is its focus on the range of societal issues that will be impacted by cybersecurity as well as its coverage of the breadth of roles that students can play to help address them. Through four learning threads taught by faculty in Computer Science, Sociology, and Film Studies, the CyberPDX curriculum spans topics from constitutional law, cyberpolicy, ethics, and filmmaking to programming, cryptography, security, and privacy in order to show students how broad cybersecurity issues are and the many ways they can participate in helping to solve them.