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Majors & Degrees

DSU announces 2015-2016 Cyber Corps Scholarship recipients

April 3, 2015

Dakota State University announces the 2015-16 recipients of the Cyber Corps scholarship as funded by the National Science Foundation's Scholarship for Service (NSF-SFS) program. Students apply for the Cyber Corps program in their sophomore year and are awarded the scholarship for their last three years at DSU. The award pays for the students’ tuition and fees for the year (up to 30 credits for undergraduate and 24 credits for graduate per year), $1,000 for books, $1,200 for professional development, and a stipend of $20,000 for undergraduate students or $32,000 for graduate students per year.

All students complete internships at various government agencies which can be local, state, tribal and federal. DSU sends students for internships anywhere from the SD Bureau of Information and Telecommunications in Pierre, S.D. to the National Security Agency or Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. Upon graduation, Cyber Corps graduates find careers in many different government agencies, completing service for the same amount of time as their scholarship award.

Before landing their careers, Cyber Corps students attend a job fair in Washington, D.C. where the number of jobs in cyber security often times outnumber the students in attendance. This ratio of jobs to grads to fill them demonstrates the need for qualified cyber security experts still needed in the United States.

The Cyber Corps program at DSU funds 10 additional students every year and is directed by Dr. Josh Pauli, Associate Professor of Cyber Security in the College of Business and Information Systems. The DSU Cyber Corps has funded 39 students since 2001 and is also partially funded by the Department of Defense Information Assurance Scholarship Program (DoD-IASP). The 2015-16 scholarship recipients are:

Joshua Dosdall – Elk Point, S.D.

Justin Soderstrom – San Antonio, Texas

Michael Carson – Dakota City, Neb.

Brandon Trocke – Big Lake, Minn.

Nicholas Jones – Clear Lake, S.D.

Chad Horack – Washington, N.J.

Ryan Hermann - Elgin, Ill.

Hunter Easterday – Papillion, NE

Sara Scimone – South Windsor, Conn.

Lucas Ziemba – Mazeppa, Minn.