GenCyber Smart Girls Camp for Middle School Students Promotes Cybersecurity as a Future Career Choice

Applications for camp are due on May 13

The National Security Agency (NSA) and National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a grant to Harford Community College to fund the College’s “GenCyber Smart Girls Camp,” a one-week, nonresidential cybersecurity summer day camp. The grant enables Harford to offer several fun events, including two one-week camp sessions this summer to rising 7th, 8th, and 9th graders ages 11-15 at no cost to increase their interest in cybersecurity, help them understand safe online behavior, and teach them how to apply GenCyber Cybersecurity First Principles. The GenCyber program will help activate the next generation of cyber defenders, helping them shift from being users to becoming makers, coders, developers, and programmers.

The camps will run July 11-15 and July 25-29, 9 AM to 4 PM, Monday through Friday. Each day at the GenCyber Smart Girls Camp, students will investigate, program, and hack familiar Internet of Things (IOT) devices such as fitness trackers, Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, and Amazon Echoes through individual and small group hands-on projects. The activities will address safe digital behavior, cybersecurity ethics, data security, and privacy through experiments with common devices.

The College plans to recruit students who are new to cybersecurity activities and ideas to support the broader aim of attracting female students from underserved populations to STEM to create a more diverse program. Applications for the camp are due on May 13 and are available at  https://go.harford.edu/GenCyber. Only parents of selected applicants will be notified on or about May 27 as to their child’s acceptance into the camp.

For more information, contact Dawn Grissom at dgrissom@harford.edu or 443.412.2364.