Once a year, the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Centers host Cyber Georgia STEMfest, giving 100 high school students hands-on experience with cyber challenges.
Students from seven districts, as far away as Kershaw, DeKalb, and Gwinnett Counties, traveled to the center.
“That was always our goal,” Eric Toler, Executive Director of the Center, told ABD. “From our very beginning, our mandate was to be a statewide entity with a statewide mission, both in K through 12, through university and college education, through professional training, research and development, and even providing services to state entities.”
The students were divided up into three teams, orange team, blue team, and green team, and spent the day working on tasks.
“We kick off with a capture-the-flag tournament. The kids are in teams, and they sit at different tables, and they work on solving problems,” Todd Gay, Director of Outreach and Engagement, explained for ABD. “Every problem that they have, they are able to get points for solving that problem as a team. They’re able to compete against each other, they’re able to work together, and they’re able to solve these different cyber challenges.”
While mastering the challenges is the highlight of the day-long event, Gay said just as important is what the students will experience.
“They will be surrounded by cyber security companies that are located in this building. They’re going to be surrounded by government entities, like Savannah River National Lab that’s in this building. They’ll be surrounded by state government as well, like the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,” he said. “They’re going to be able to talk to all of these different cybersecurity companies. Not only that, but they’ll be also able to talk about their careers and what they need to do in their school to be able to achieve those careers.”
Toler said part of their mission is to help close the gap between the number of open positions, particularly in the cybersecurity industry, and the number of trained people to fill the positions.
“We’ve realized that to solve this workforce problem across the state and the nation, we’ve got to start when they’re young. We’ve got to inspire them. We’ve got to give them the tools they need to as they come out of high school, they have the interest and at least some aptitude to want to continue this career field that we need desperately to fill,” said Toler.
At its core, the mission of the center is cybersecurity, emerging cyber technologies, and creating a workforce pipeline of trained personnel. But Gay said the students represent the human side of the center’s mission.
“They are really what it’s all about. We’re here to train these students, to get them excited about careers that they could possibly have, and also to let them know that they can do this. A lot of these kids don’t think they can do this, so we allow them to come over here and show them that they can do these different exercises to build confidence with them” he said.
There is a similar event for middle school students held each spring.
This bi-annual event is sponsored by Conceal, Sealing Tech, Savannah River National Lab, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the SRS Community Reuse Organization.
