Boise State’s online Bachelor of Science in Cyber Operations and Resilience (uCORe) culminates in CORE 480 Cyber Capstone, a three-credit course where students gain real-world, hands-on experience to apply the skills they’ve developed throughout the program. Not only does this course benefit students, but it also benefits Idaho’s rural communities, water districts, school districts and nonprofits as they receive free cybersecurity improvements from the students.
Marissa Wilson benefited greatly from her experience in the program. “No matter where I go in my career, I’m going to be able to find the answers.”
Video Transcript
So the cyber operations program is amazing because cybersecurity is a huge, huge field. There’s like a whole technical side. There’s more of like a operational side. And you’re going to get so much more experience and exposure than any other program that I researched out there.
A strong community
The fact that there is community, and the community even happens if you’re not in Idaho. And you end up having classmates that are doing this in the real world, and can give you some of their experience to understand, like how cybersecurity really works and figure out which direction you might want to go. I feel like all of that helped me.
I was looking for something that was online, but I also wanted to be able to connect with people. I wouldn’t choose a different program because you’re going to be able to find out what you actually are interested in doing and what you’re good at.
CORE 480 Cyber Capstone
The capstone is the finale to the cyber operations program. The capstone can be so many different things, like you can do a risk assessment, you can do a vulnerability scanning. You’re learning how to do project management. But you’re also like deciding what the focus of your project is going to be. So then it’s like choosing from a list of organizations that would like Boise State’s help with, like a cyber project or a technical project that they’ve got going on.
The cool thing is that at the end of this project, we handed over the document and the nonprofit organization was able to go ahead and execute.
And they did move their physical storage to online storage. So they are much more resilient than they had been in the past.
The top three things that the program gave me that helped me be successful in the capstone project was critical thinking skills, systems thinking. And just like an in-depth knowledge of like how to research.
That no matter where I go in my career, I’m going to be able to find the answers. And that’s what the capstone project taught me, is that the accumulation of all of the knowledge that I’ve gained, is just the beginning. And from there, I can figure anything out.
So the cyber program ultimately gave me like a base of knowledge that I know I can take with me anywhere and be successful.