NYU Tandon Expands Pioneering Cybersecurity Program to High School Girls in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park
Updated March 26, 2019
BROOKLYN, New York, August 8, 2018 – Civic leaders, faculty, and community members gathered this morning to celebrate the expansion of NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s pioneering computer science and cybersecurity summer program for high school students into Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Computer Science for Cyber Security (CS4CS) is a free, three-week intensive program providing an introduction on the fundamentals of cybersecurity and computer science while breaking down barriers and encouraging the cybersecurity professionals of the future to celebrate women and minorities in STEM. More than 250 students have already completed the summer program since NYU Tandon launched it in 2012 on its Downtown Brooklyn campus. Now, for the first-time, students are learning these cyber skills in Sunset Park.
Oath Foundation, which focuses on building opportunities for women, girls, and underserved youth to become future leaders, is supporting Tandon’s STEM education efforts in Sunset Park.
"Programs like the CS4CS summer session equip students with key learnings, while also enhancing their creativity and teamwork and providing a foundation for important career paths,” said Sara Link, president, Oath Foundation. “Oath Foundation aims to help arm students with critical skills that they’ll need to take on the world’s biggest challenges. Through this program, we hope that these talented young women will be better prepared to navigate and combat the cybersecurity threats of tomorrow.”
At the open house for CS4CS, the 26 girls enrolled in the program, many from neighboring Sunset Park High School, demonstrated to visitors their new computer science and cybersecurity skills and received career insights from speakers.
CS4CS aims to help young women gain skills in STEM — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — and confidence. It also helps build the pipeline of young women entering cybersecurity — a high-paying field growing at 10 times the rate of the overall job market, and one in which women are dramatically underrepresented. The United States and many other countries have a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, a situation recognized as a major threat to national security.
Almost from the founding of our school 164 years ago, our faculty, students, and alumni have been keeping New Yorkers safe, by writing modern building codes, developing urban firefighting techniques, and helping design and maintain our city’s built environment. It is therefore with great pride that we take this important step of engaging a new generation of engineers in Brooklyn who can someday ensure the digital safety of our city and society. To the young women of CS4CS: Welcome, and may this become your first step upon a rewarding intellectual path.”
— NYU Tandon Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan
CS4CS is a part of STEMnow, one of New York City’s largest and most comprehensive lineups of summer workshops, classes, and labs for middle and high-school students. Most of the 20 courses for students and teachers are free. STEMnow is an integral part of NYU Tandon’s 2014 commitment to the White House to train 500 New York City public school teachers in 10 years and positively impact 50,000 students. This summer, just four years after that goal was set, 80 percent of those 500 public school teachers have been trained.
“Thanks to the support of Oath Foundation, we’re able to expand our STEMnow program offerings beyond our Downtown Brooklyn campus and serve more students,” said Ben Esner, director of NYU Tandon’s Center for K12 STEM Education. “With Oath Foundation, NYU Tandon shares a common goal of providing opportunities for young women to experience STEM, and this program will help foster the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.”
“NYU’s STEMnow program is creating a new bridge to the jobs of the future for young women in Sunset Park and throughout Brooklyn,” said Andrew Kimball, CEO of Industry City. “Building that opportunity pipeline — one that extends beyond our campus and into the community — is a critically important component of the innovation economy ecosystem and part of our long-term vision for Industry City.”
The launch of CS4CS increases Tandon’s presence at Industry City, which is also the home for Tandon’s new Veterans Future Lab (VFL), New York’s first business incubator for military veterans. The VFL launched last year with support from Barclays. The VFL also receives support from Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC); Orrick, Herrington, Sutcliffe, LLP, U.S. Small Business Administration, and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. The CS4CS students at Industry City study in space provided by New York City College of Technology.
CS4CS is part of NYU Tandon’s comprehensive initiative to engage more women in STEM fields. Last year, women comprised 40 percent of the freshman class, 20 full percentage points above the national average for undergraduate engineering education.
About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, one of the country’s foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu.
About Oath Foundation
Oath Foundation is focused on improving the lives of women, girls and underserved youth through fostering leadership and empowerment, improving economic opportunity, access to education and technology and cultivating creativity.
Established in 2014, the Foundation provides funding to non-profit organizations working in these arenas as well as providing opportunities for Oath Foundation employees to lend their talent and skills to benefit the organizations and the individuals they serve. For more information on Oath Foundation, please contact Foundation@oath.com.
