33 middle and high school students are participating in week-long camps on cybersecurity and machine learning at Trail Ridge Middle School.
These camps are co-sponsored by St. Vrain Valley Schools, the University of Colorado Boulder and Northrop Grumman.
The three camps include:
- Fundamentals of cybersecurity
- Advanced cybersecurity
- Principles of machine learning
“Part of why we do camps like this is to generate interest in these professions,” said Program Director, Axel Reitzig.
By 2021 there are expected to be 1.8 million job openings in this field.
“Not only have these camps taught me practical skills for a career in cybersecurity, but they also introduced me to the vast number of potential career and educational paths in STEM,” said recent SVVSD graduate and camp attendee, Michelle Tran.
Students in these camps get to partake in a field trip to CU Boulder that provides them with hands on experience.
The cybersecurity classes will participate in Cyberpatriots, a national cybersecurity program and competition.
The competition season begins in September and students participate in events during November and December. There is a state competition event held in January and if students excel there they have the opportunity of competing at the national level.
Camp Instructors include Dr. Dan Massey, formerly of the Department of Homeland Security and now director of cybersecurity programming at CU Boulder, graduate students from the applied math program at CU Boulder and Connor Hansen, a recent SVVSD graduate who will be studying computer science at the University of Colorado.
“The best part of having knowledgeable and experienced instructors is they are able to delve deep into their topic of expertise, making the lessons all the more interesting,” Tran said.
Hansen is teaching the fundamentals class and also wrote an intro to cybersecurity course that teachers are using next year in the district.