7 Program Goals: list your annual program goals and describe the actions/progress taken to meet those goals.

These are the current department goals for the CITE and Cybersecurity programs (for academic year 2024-2025).

Goal #1: Ongoing
Assist in the facilitation of creating a pipeline for students in technology through training of high school faculty, and connecting with stake holders to develop articulation, transfer, and dual-enrollment agreements in our region.

1. The CITE programs participate in area recruiting efforts by visiting local high schools, conducting “Open House” activities, setting up a marketing table specific to the CITE programs at other events in the area, for example the Idaho State Fair, car shows, and employment events.

Goal #2: Ongoing

Enhance student’s operational knowledge by making available advanced lab environment in networking and cybersecurity.

1. We currently have a student lab system the students can access from the Internet. This system is called “NetLab” and we successfully got this operational in the Fall of 2022 with Cisco CCNA Routing and Switching labs. In the Spring and Fall of 2023 we added more labs for A+ computer repair, Security +, Cisco CCNA w/Adaptive Security Appliance hardware labs. Both CITE and Cybersecurity students have access to and use NetLab.
2.  We continue to expand on our Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities as time allows. We use this facility, which is a dedicated classroom with servers and workstations, to assist our CITE students in understanding the process of data packet analysis. This project was funded through a grant from the Governor’s office and facilitated by Dr. Haney from the University of Idaho. Both CITE and Cybersecurity students have access to and use NetLab.

Goal #3: Ongoing
Identify and implement a sustainable model for managing and maintaining CITE/Cybersecurity equipment.

1. Our current allocation of funding from the State of Idaho and federal Perkins grants helps the CITE program maintain our server room equipment. Along with NIC’s IT department’s allocation of personal computers for our lecture and laboratory classrooms.
2.  Our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) also has donated equipment in the past to the CITE program. This equipment is usually older, but still usable, especially from an educational standpoint.
3.  The CITE program is always looking for financial donations to our program and we try and cultivate those opportunities as they arise. We were able to participate in a Cybersecurity High School Initiative (CHI) grant with northwest colleges and universities to enhance our high school teacher’s backgrounds in cybersecurity. This did not bring a lot of monetary dollars to the college but the program was used to train high school teachers to teach cybersecurity to their students in the hopes those students will continue into a post-secondary cybersecurity or information technology program after they graduate from high school.

Goal #4: Ongoing
Hire a third instructor (or identify qualified adjuncts) and adjust course assignments for equitable and balanced instructor workloads.

1. We were unsuccessful in hiring another instructor to replace the one whom left last year. We went back to the college’s administration and provided data to get them to raise the pay range for our information technology instructor position.
2. We had another instructor leave the college mid-semester this year and now have two instructor positions open. Currently we have seven applicants for the two positions and are hopeful we will make offers to the candidates who have applied. These would be in conjunction with the two positions we currently have filled; we expect 1 of these instructors to retire within the next 5 years.
3. We also have one Adjunct Professor and anticipate having three Ph.D. graduates assisting us in the Cybersecurity program in the Fall of 2024. The Ph.D. students is part of a collaboration with University of Idaho that the President of NIC has encouraged and created.
4. We are additionally seeking to create a position within the college for a SOC (Security Operations Center) Manager in the future.