SaTC: EDU: JROTC-CS Project Impact Study

Cybersecurity talent is critically needed across the U.S. to ensure the protection of data related to

defense, labor workforce, healthcare, financial ecosystem, and more. This directly aligns with part of the National Science Foundation’s Strategic Plan "to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes". To address the need for more cybersecurity professionals, CSforALL (New York City Foundation for Computer Science Education) has launched a privately-funded demonstration project to include cybersecurity as a part of courses that Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) students take in high school.

The project now proposed aligns the ongoing demonstration project with rigorous research to investigate the impacts of the JROTC computer science (JROTC-CS) program on student and institutional outcomes for cybersecurity and computer science education. The project will specifically examine the impact of the JROTC-CS program across varying contexts, such as race/ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, access to broadband, and geographic location.

The results will inform adaptation of the program’s design and implementation to ensure that the program provides equitable opportunities to students to learn computer science and cybersecurity. The outcome of this study will include new instruments for the collection of data to measure the impact of a cybersecurity education experience on high school students.

It will also contribute to our understanding of how these education experiences impact academic achievement and interest in pursuing additional courses and careers in cybersecurity and how to improve cybersecurity education in high schools.

This three-year impact study will address two overarching research questions. First, it will examine the ways in which the JROTC-CS experience impacts the cognitive (e.g. knowledge and skills) and non-cognitive (e.g. social and emotional behaviors) development of JROTC cadets. Second, it will examine the ways in which the JROTC-CS experience impacts the school curriculum program in Computer Science and Cybersecurity.

For example, does the JROTC-CS program lead to an increase in: the number of courses in computer science and cybersecurity that are offered, awareness of inequities in these courses, additional professional development experiences for teachers, or additional students at the schools who are engaged in computer science and cybersecurity? Aligning the current JROTC-CS demonstration project with research on multiple and confounding factors will provide evidence for ensuring a high-quality improvement science model that improves implementation of the project as it scales.

This project is supported by the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program, which funds proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and in this case specifically cybersecurity education. The SaTC program aligns with the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan and the National Privacy Research Strategy to protect and preserve the growing social and economic benefits of cyber systems while ensuring security and privacy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.