Community Outreach
Expanding Access to Computing and Cybersecurity
Our community outreach programs broaden participation in computing and cybersecurity by providing alternative educational pathways.
High School Awards
Southern Miss partners with the National Center for Women and Information Technology to offer the Mississippi Affiliate Aspirations in Computing awards program.
Aspirations in Computing (AiC)
This program recognizes 9-12 grade students and educators with aspirations, abilities
and technical accomplishments in computing.
K-12 Co-curricular
Cyber to the Top is our K-12 outreach program that provides summer camp and other co-curricular activities. By engaging our youth with safe and fun active learning activities in computing and cybersecurity, we believe we can widen the pipeline of technical talent in the United States.
*We do not have any K-12 outreach activities scheduled at this time.
Following the 2020 pandemic, we partnered with Thinking Media to offer the Learning Blade platform to schools throughout Mississippi. Learning Blade is a supplemental STEM and Computer Science (CS) toolbox of interactive online lessons, ready-to-use lesson plans and classroom activities proven to increase STEM and CS career awareness for middle school students.
Learning Blade was provided to Mississippi schools by Southern Miss, in collaboration with the Mississippi Department of Education, with funding from the Governor’s Emergency Education Response (GEER) Fund program.
Upskill and Re-skill Training Pathways
Beyond traditional academic offerings, the school provides alternative pathways to computing and cybersecurity education.
Southern Miss partnered with the Mississippi Coding Academies to launch a new training program on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The program includes skills development for full-stack software development and cybersecurity defense.
Southern Miss has provided cybersecurity awareness training and more advanced cyber training to Veterans, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and other Mississippi residents. Cyber4Work was initially funded through the Mississippi Department of Employment Security.