Northern Faculty Chosen for NASA Training

Two faculty members at West Virginia Northern Community College have been accepted for week-long intensive training courses through the NASA/West Virginia Space Grant Consortium.

David Stoffel, assistant professor and program director, computer information technology, and Adam Beatty, computer information technology instructor, both of Moundsville, will participate in the week-long courses in this month in Morgantown.

Stoffel will take the Systems Engineering Teacher Certification Training course while Beatty will take the Cyber Security Teacher Certification Training course. Both courses will be taught from May 23-27.

Funding for the program has been made possible by a grant from NASA under the West Virginia Statewide Partnership to Advance Community College Education in STEM project, undertaken in collaboration with the West Virginia Community and Technical College System. Northern’s faculty members each will receive a $4,500 stipend for participation in the courses.

Stoffel and Beatty both expressed excitement that they will be able to integrate NASA-approved materials into CIT courses being offered at WVNCC. They said this is particularly important because the CIT program will be offering a new associate in applied science degree in Cyber Security for the fall semester beginning Aug. 29.

Along with “Introduction to Cyber Security” for fall, another new course is “Fundamentals of Hacking,” Beatty said, “Because you have to be able to think like a hacker” to be able to recognize and prevent such activities.

“You have to constantly keep up on what is happening” in the IT world, Stoffel said, and the NASA-funded opportunity is a perfect example of doing just that. Other courses under development at WVNCC include “Ethical Protocols of Cyber Security,” “Introduction to Cloud Computing” and “Tactical Perimeter Defense in Networking Security.”

Dr. Carry DeAtley, vice president of academic affairs at Northern, said Computer Information Technology is one of the fastest growing departments in the college. “We are very proud of our department personnel. They already are knowledgeable and now will be cutting edge.”

More information is available by contacting DeAtley by email at cdeatley@wvncc.edu or by phone at 304-214-8856.

5/6/16