Seven schools in the University of Arkansas System are joining to offer academic programs in cybersecurity.
The consortium that includes five community colleges is being supported by a $1.96 million grant from the Office of Skills Development, a division of the state Department of Commerce, said Erin Finzer, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, a leading member of the group.
Finzer spoke Wednesday at a meeting of the University of Arkansas board of trustees, where a committee approved a memorandum of understanding establishing the consortium.
The governor-appointed board is set to meet again today at the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville.
The state grant money will establish what she called "distributed learning spaces" at the member schools as well as two high schools, Finzer told trustees.
Courses in cybersecurity will be taught in-person where there's an instructor who will also be "broadcasting out to students across the network [of schools] in the similar spaces," Finzer said.
Finzer said the group effort is about "bringing middle skills and entry-level skills" to learners, with programs enrolling students interested in earning credentials that "stack up." The effort is also seeking to enroll "working learners who want to come in and gain certain skills," Finzer said.
Finzer said there are many openings for cybersecurity jobs in the state, and trustees praised the effort.
"I just wanted to compliment you and commend you for implementing a program that certainly business and industry professionals, even individual consumers, are in dire need of," said Morril Harriman, a Little Rock attorney and trustees board member.
Christina Drale, chancellor for UALR, referred to the "collective talent" among instructors at the member schools.
"Every institution doesn't have to have sort of the full complement of instructional talent on site in order to offer these certificates and these stackable credentials," Drale told trustees, adding that in many ways the concept can be thought of as "the wave of the future," in particular for educational efforts with a focus on developing workers for needed jobs.
Finzer also noted that grant money from the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, a part of the National Security Agency, is being used to provide cybersecurity training for high school teachers in Arkansas.
"Very soon, we will have built capacity in this state with lower level instruction in cybersecurity," Finzer said.
The effort is called the Cyber Learning Network, or CyberLearN. Other members schools are: the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff; University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville; Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas; University of Arkansas Community College at Hope-Texarkana; University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton; and University of Arkansas - Pulaski Technical College.
The network "was created to really put Arkansas on the map as a cyber defense state, dealing not only with cybersecurity right now, which is our most critical need, but later on in emergent cyber technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and financial technologies," Finzer said.