The University of North Georgia has been awarded $96,138 from the Department of Defense through the Cybersecurity Scholarship Program to fund one-year, full-ride scholarships for two students.
UNG's cybersecurity program also will benefit from the Aug. 13 signing of the 2019 Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes the DoD to establish cyber institutes nationwide, starting with UNG.
The scholarships, which can be renewed annually through completion of graduate school, include tuition, fees, books, a laptop, and living expenses. The students also were awarded paid summer internships and agreed to work for one year with the DoD in the cybersecurity field after graduation.
"This is a life-changing opportunity for our students studying cybersecurity and cyber operations," said Dr. Bryson Payne, director of the Center for Cyber Operations Education and principal investigator of the CySP scholarship grant program at UNG. "A large number of our students work part-time to full-time to support their studies, and this full-ride scholarship plus a $25,000 stipend for living expenses will allow these students to focus their effort 100 percent on becoming the best cyber professionals they can be."
The guarantee of having a job with the National Security Agency or DoD after graduation makes the program attractive to UNG students as well.
"Many of our cyber students already want to work at the NSA or in the Department of Defense after graduation, and this scholarship-for-service grant guarantees them one year of experience defending our country from cyber-attacks at the top-secret level for each year they accept the scholarship," said Ash Mady, department head of computer science and information systems.
The program awards UNG two Cybersecurity Scholarship Program scholars, whose names cannot be released because of NSA security requirements, in the first year of UNG's participation in the program. Four UNG students initially were selected, but one graduated early and a second declined because he or she received another full-ride, nationally competitive scholarship.
According to the DoD, only 31 colleges and universities received CySP awards nationwide.
