Austin Peay ranked first in state, ninth in country in Cyber FastTrack program

(Published May 28, 2019)

Computer science students from Austin Peay State University currently rank ninth nationally and No. 1 in the state in a nationwide cybersecurity program for college students and graduates.

Hundreds of colleges from across the country (and nearly 40 from Tennessee) are participating in the Cyber FastTrack program, which launched on April 5 and continues through Sept. 16. More than 13,000 students across the country started the program, and only 2,400 qualified for the next stage.

Thirty-three of those were Austin Peay students, ranking APSU higher than Tennessee Tech, which qualified 19 students, and Memphis, which qualified 11 students. Austin Peay started with 161 students in the program.

Dr. Karen Meisch, interim dean of the College of STEM, credited Dr. Leong Lee, Dr. Joseph Elarde and Barry Bruster “for their hard work in establishing Austin Peay State University as first in Tennessee and ninth in the nation.” Lee is chair of the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology. Elarde and Bruster teach security classes.

The students are playing for $2.5 million in scholarships and for direct introductions to employers.

Twenty-five state governors and the SANS Institute launched Cyber FastTrack as the first step in a national initiative to close the U.S. cybersecurity skills gap, according to its website.

“Cyber FastTrack gives every college student in each of the governors’ states a way to ‘play a game’ to discover their aptitude to excel in the field.”

Cyber FastTrack has three stages: Assess (April 5-May 10), Game (May 20-June 28) and Essentials (July 10-Sept. 16). The Assess stage scored students as they navigated cybersecurity threats.

The 33 APSU students who qualified were invited to the Game stage, where they’ll focus on self-learning and how to identify security flaws and a cyber criminal’s trail. Students who qualify for the last stage will take on advanced cybersecurity topics.

Here are the schools currently ranked in the Top 10 nationally:

1. Western Governors University
2. Southern Arkansas University
3. (tie) Central Connecticut State University, Fairleigh Dickinson University and George Mason University

6. Michigan State University
7. (tie) University of New Haven and University of North Carolina at Charlotte

9. Austin Peay
10. University of North Georgia

Only 10 of Tennessee’s 38 participating schools qualified for the next stage (APSU, Tennessee Tech, Memphis, UT Chattanooga, UT Martin, Carson-Newman, UT Knoxville, East Tennessee, Belmont and Bethel).

TO LEARN MORE

• For more about the Cyber FastTrack program, visit cyber-fasttrack.org.
• For more about APSU’s Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, go to www.apsu.edu/csci.