Project Grant 2434925

This $200,000 federal grant award from the National Science Foundation's STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) will support an educational instrumentation project at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The project will secure a security operations center (SOC) equipped with servers, workstations, monitoring tools, and other hardware and software to enable student-run cybersecurity training and simulation. The goal is to enrich undergraduate learning in cybersecurity by providing a real-world environment for students to practice security operations, incident response, and auditing skills. An estimated 993 students and 15 faculty are expected to utilize the project-funded equipment each year. The project aims to train faculty, create lab modules, and integrate the SOC-based curriculum into cybersecurity courses. Formative and summative assessments will be used to evaluate the impact of the new equipment on student learning and professional identities. This grant award reflects the NSF's mission to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at Hispanic-Serving Institutions.