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Issue Number 17
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December 2016
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A Message from the Dean
Dear Friends,
Season's Greetings! As we approach the year 2017, I would like to wish you and your loved ones a great Holiday Season and a very Happy New Year. We are closing an eventful year at CPS with the completion of a major re-organization of the college. We have been delighted to welcome new colleagues and new cohorts of students while cheering those students who graduated, but also saddened to see some of our colleagues leave the university for new adventures. We wish them all well and remind them to stay in touch with their CPS family. Our faculty and students have once again pushed the boundaries of learning this year and have reached new heights in pursuit of their professional passions. You have likely learned of all the changes during the year, the achievements and accomplishments of our faculty and students, and the news of events at the college, having read the major headlines here on CPS Leads. I hope you continue to stay connected and will remain in touch, be it via social media, phone calls, emails, or in-person visits. We welcome your engagement and continued support. In the meantime, have a safe and enjoyable holiday break!
Ali Eskandarian
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Of Note:
Cafritz Awards
In an ongoing partnership, the
Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and CPS' Center for Excellence in Public Leadership (CEPL) join forces to recognize and reward outstanding performance and exemplary service by DC Government employees. Each year five individual winners receive a $7,500 cash prize and a winning team receives a $15,000 cash prize.
One such public servant and a 2016 award winner is
Aurora Delespin-Jones
,
Program Analyst
at the DC Office on Aging. Driven by her fierce advocacy for older adults, Aurora initiated the ConnectorCard, a prepaid subsidized Visa debit card payment method. Participants, primarily low-income seniors, and people with disabilities ages 18-59, can use the ConnectorCard to pay for any public or private transit vendor that has debit card capacity.
Igor Strakovsky's Excited Hyperons!
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| Professor Igor Strakovsky |
On November 16th and 17th, 2016, Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) hosted the International Workshop on Excited Hyperons in QCD Thermodynamics at Freeze-Out in Newport News, Virginia. This workshop brought together top experts, researchers, post-docs and students in high-energy ion-ion interactions with those probing hadronic physics with lattice quantum chromodynamics. GW and Professor Igor Strakovsky of the Physics Department who is based at VSTC played key roles in the organization of this meeting. The program consisted of 28 talks and discussions among the 70 participants. The aim of the workshop was to advance our understanding of what happened microseconds after the Big Bang. Former GW faculty George Gamow led the development of the Big Bang theory of the expanding universe.
IT's Single Sign-On at GW
 Beginning in January 2017, the Division of Information Technology (DIT) will introduce a new single sign-on page to access the following applications and services:
- Collibra
- Groups Management
- GW Google Apps (Mail, Drive, Calendar, etc.)
- Litmos
- Office 365
- WebEx
News for Techies
The UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) Open Forum Digest had a section about news sources on technology, data and analytics recently that provided a number of good suggestions for educators and students. Ray Schroeder, Director of UPCEA Center for Online Leadership, listed his top sources:
And Nicole de Vries, Application Systems Analyst at the Georgia Institute of Technology listed her favorites:
NPR has subject areas tagged that one can subscribe to:
Design and Analytics:
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Au Revoir Cher Ami!
In his ten years of service to the College and the University Dr. Lemieux has had many achievements and successes and he is well-known for his boundless energy and penchant for academic innovation. For example, he created and rolled out both of the Master's degrees that he now directs. He also developed a number of graduate certificate programs with external partners and co-developed the bachelor degree completion program in cybersecurity with his CPS colleague Dr. Sara Hooshangi. He is also a co-founder of the GW Cyber Academy at the Virginia Science and Technology Campus and secured external funding to support academic programs and the Cyber Academy.
Learning of the news, CPS Dean Ali Eskandarian said: "Frederic's departure is certainly a loss for CPS, and I am especially saddened with this news. He has been a steady and supportive colleague throughout his tenure, but also a friend. However, I am delighted that he has found new professional adventures to delve into, and I am sure his contributions will be substantial and meaningful. We will miss him, but he'll always remain a member of the CPS family."
Frederic is leaving for Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and he will be running the applied intelligence master's programs (national security, homeland security, law enforcement, business intelligence). It is a joint appointment with the Department of Sociology where he will be a professor.
Professor Lemieux earned his Ph.D. in criminology from University of Montreal and is a prolific researcher and author. He has published 5 books, 20 peer-reviewed academic papers and has chaired and presented at many international conferences. He is also active as a writer of op-eds and blogs and has published numerous pieces in national media outlets such as Newsweek, US News, Huffington Post, Salon and Scientific American.
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Huda's Dream Comes True with Hard Work and a Scholarship
Huda Fawzi is one of the five CPS students who received the prestigious
Cybersecurity Public Service Scholarship from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) for 2016-17. The program is designed to create a partnership between students and the Commonwealth of Virginia by assisting recipients with their educational costs - up to $20,000 - in return for working one year in a state cybersecurity position for each year in which financial support was received.
As a mother of three children and a part-time employee, Huda says education is the most profitable investment she has ever made in her life and that she always had a dream to get her degree from GW.
After earning her associate degree in Information Technology from NOVA (Northern Virginia Community College) with a GPA of 3.74, she was admitted to the CPS Bachelor Degree in Cybersecurity for fall 2016. During the enrollment process Huda received an e-mail from the program director, Dr. Scott White, with information about the SCHEV scholarship. Being in transition from one school to another and running against time, she managed to complete her scholarship application just before the deadline. After a few weeks she received a letter that she had been wait-listed and would not receive the scholarship if the applicants in front of her were all qualified. Huda says: "At this point I lost hope but decided to work hard to apply for the program again next year. Auspiciously, I received another letter in mid-November that I had been selected to enroll in this scholarship program. I was so happy when I got this information because the scholarship is very important for me financially."
This was a coup for CPS' Bachelor Degree in Cybersecurity under the leadership of Dr. Scott White to garner five of twenty five scholarships awarded in the inaugural year of the program. Frank Adjei, Ibrahim Kadara, Scott Boger and Aristotle Porras are the other CPS recipients.
Click here for more information about CPS'
Cybersecurity
(Bachelor's Degree Completion) Program.
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John Carruthers, Distinguished Leader
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| John Carruthers (center) Receiving APA's Distinguished Leadership Award |
Dr. John Carruthers, director of Sustainable Urban Planning program at CPS, received the Distinguished Leadership Award for a Planning Educator from the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Planning Association on November 15th.
The award citation reads: "John Carruthers is celebrated for his leadership and commitment to planning education, most notably demonstrated through his creation of innovative Sustainable Urban Planning Program at George Washington University....The chapter honors John Carruthers for his ability to create a meaningful core curriculum while simultaneously mentoring the sustainable thought leaders of the future."
In October, John was one of the experts interviewed for the article
2016's Greenest Cities in America
on the WalletHub website. In answer to the question "What policies or investments offer the biggest bang for the buck?" John said: "Investing in cities - by forming good policies that promote dense urbanization - is good for the environment and the greening of society. A simple fix that many cities ought to pursue is doing away with land use regulations that suppress urban density to artificially low levels."
Prior to joining CPS in 2011 John was an economist at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Office of Policy Development and Research. He holds a Ph.D. in urban design and planning from the University of Washington. He has more than 15 years of experience in academia, and has published numerous journal articles, written many book chapters and contributed to four edited volumes on the topics of environmental valuation; urban land use and land use policy; urban and regional development; and public finance.
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Women in Cybersecurity
Text and Photos by Paul de Souza, Founder Director,
The Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI)
On November 9
th
CPS' Cybersecurity Strategy and Information Management program hosted the Women in Cyber Event to celebrate the accomplishments of women in the Cybersecurity field and cultivate future leaders. The keynote speaker was
Major General Jennifer L. Napper
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Major General Jennifer L. Napper
assumed command of the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, Fort Huachuca, on September 22, 2010. She held the position of Deputy Commanding General for Network Operations, U.S. Army Cyber Command/2d U.S. Army.
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Connie Uthoff, Event Moderator
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The keynote speech was followed by a vibrant panel discussion with very active audience participation.
Invited panelists were
Christine de Souza
(CSFI Director/Cyber Systems Operator - Maintenance at 856 Cyber Protection Team (CPT)),
Melissa Hathaway
former Director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration and also of the National Security Council under the Barack Obama administration, and
Hillary MacMillan
(Vice President, Solutions Architecture for Secure Channels).
Despite the growing demand and tremendous opportunities in the job market, cybersecurity remains a field where there is a significant shortage of skilled professionals. Surprisingly, the representation of women in this workforce is alarmingly low. According to one study, approximately 11% of information security professionals are women.
The Women in Cyber Event aims to inform and encourage women of all ages to consider a future in a cyber-related field. We need a whole community to shape a future that is ready to address the opportunities and challenges in cyberspace.
The event was organized by CPS' Connie Uthoff, Assistant Director, Cybersecurity Strategy and Information Management program and Karen A. Austin of the United States Cybersecurity Magazine
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Ever Upward, John!
Dr. John F. Ebersole, president of Excelsior University from 2006 to 2016 and a visionary leader in adult higher education who had been courageously battling myelodysplastic syndrome passed away on November 23rd. He was 72 years old.
Throughout his more than 30-year career in higher education he was committed to expanding opportunity for underserved and non-traditional students. Under his leadership, Excelsior was transformed into a national institution, enrolling as many as 40,000 students annually from throughout the United States and beyond. Today, Excelsior has nearly 160,000 graduates worldwide.
John Ebersole was a visionary in every sense of the word and his expertise covered many areas of higher education including online, international and competency-based education. His leadership in higher education included serving as president of the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA,) the leading association for professional, continuing, and online education and as a board member of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU) in New York.
He continued writing and publishing even after he had gone on leave because of his illness. One of his last pieces published in July is "The Future of Continuing Education" where he says: "Three macro forces are coming together to keep the need for continuing education before us for the foreseeable future. These are: 1. Global competition; 2. An accelerating pace of change; and 3. A decline in the period of knowledge relevance, especially in areas of technology.......The intersection of these three forces is where future professional continuing education will reside. American workers will increasingly see that their ability to compete, both internationally and domestically, will be dependent upon their knowledge and skill base, and the frequency with which they are updated.....One of the challenges for continuing higher education of the future will not be whether there is demand, but rather its ability to meet complex needs which are coming quickly and demanding relevant updates." And he concludes: "The future of CE looks bright for those wishing to make the investment in their own skill and knowledge updates, and to understand the complexity of what it will take to be competitive."
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