On March 10, 2020 at Hostos Community College, a panel of five industry professionals presented information on cyber security and provided career advice to the college community. Networking with students followed the panel presentation. This activity was funded by a CUNY-BRT Course Innovation and Career Readiness Grant.
 
The keynote speaker was Dr.Charles Camarda, who worked with NASA for 43 years. Dr. Camarda demonstrated how the high impact practices of team work and experiential learning led to a resolution of the issues involved in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. 
 
The Panelists included a diverse and experienced group of professionals. They included:  Shalom Cohen, President of EZ Tech Assist, a company providing Cyber Security, Managed IT Services, and Help Desk Support; Anthony Reyes, Senior Manager & John Jay Alumni, from BDO’s National Security/ Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS); Patricia Voight, Managing Director at Ernest & Young and Governance of Enterprise Information & Technology Advisory Group at ISACA; Joy Nuga, Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College Alumna, Hunter alumna and Risk Analyst at Goldman Sachs; and Vincent Lai, FBI Special Agent in the New York field office who works in the cyber division investigating various criminal violations. 

Through the above-mentioned grant, obtained by Hostos Professor Amy Ramson, Esq. and Lisanette Rosario, the Director of Career Services in the Division of Continuing Education and Workforce Development at Hostos, the criminal justice course titled “Issues in Law Enforcement” was revised to incorporate cyber security and career readiness as a component. 
 
The initial part of the component featured Shalom Cohen, who provided a foundation in cybersecurity for students through lectures on the Internet, cybercrime, and cyber security. He mentored all the students in class who provided a service-learning workshop to the college community titled “How to Prevent Yourself From Being Hacked.”
 
A second part of the component was a virtual apprenticeship provided by iQ4. Hostos served as the first community college participating in the iQ4 program, in which students worked with course faculty, student peers, and industry experts as mentors via the iQ4 applied learning platform utilizing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cyber security Framework. Students became cyber-interns and worked in teams to solve real world business challenges in the area of insider threats. They analyzed case studies through the lens of such job roles as fraud, sabotage, espionage, theft or intellectual property officers. The team assignments required students to provide a mitigation and management strategy for cases covering the identification, detection, protection against, response to, and recovery from an insider threat. They also learned how to build and maintain communications with executives, peers and regulators. A Department of Homeland Security table-top exercise methodology was used to identify findings and recommendations.
 
As Director of Career Services at Hostos, Lisanette Rosario provides strategic direction and leadership for all aspects of career and professional development services for students and alumni. She leads an established and dynamic team in executing and developing programming that assists students in achieving their career goals before and after graduation.

Professor Amy Ramson has taught for 30 years in the paralegal studies and criminal justice program at the College. She is an attorney admitted to practice in the states of New York (1983) and Georgia (1987). Her areas of practice are immigration and international law; her areas of scholarship include sexual harassment education, online teaching, service learning and assessment, and networked learning.

For more information about the Public, Policy and Law Unit at Hostos Community College go to:
https://www.hostos.cuny.edu/Administrative-Offices/Office-of-Academic-Affairs/Departments/Behavioral-and-Social-Sciences/Public-Policy-Law-Unit

For more information about Career Services, go to: http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/cso/

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