Cyber competitions as a computer science recruiting tool
Thomas A. Augustine, Lori L. DeLooze, Justin Monroe, Christopher Wheeler · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2010
Computer Science departments strive to recruit from a pool of the best students, many of whom are choose engineering or other technical majors. Fortunately, this has becomes easier recently because student interest in cyber security has greatly increased in the past few years. This paper describes a Computer Science freshman recruiting tool which harnesses this student interest by providing an eight hour cyber training and competition framework designed to be attended by Computer Science candidates, which is implemented using both faculty and current students. These events have greatly contributed to a fifty percent increase in Computer Science and Information Technology enrollment at the US Naval Academy over the past two years, with an added benefit of increased current student retention. The success of this program depends on both faculty and students providing a relaxed, informative and interactive environment for future Computer Science candidates. This paper further discusses lessons learned in recruitment goal setting, cyber security event creation, planning, implementation and follow-up efforts.