Story provided by Dr. Carrie Silver, director of recruiting and marketing for USC Upstate Greenville and the camp’s coordinator
Your smartphone, your home’s wifi, the credit card you used to order dinner last night, the password you haven’t changed in months—the pieces of our digital network make our lives easier, but they can also open us up to vulnerabilities. Cyber attacks are growing in scale and sophistication, and no person or company is exempt from the threat.
The upside to this surge in cyber crimes is a corresponding growth in the cybersecurity jobs sector. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that cybersecurity jobs will increase by 32% this year, creating jobs at a faster rate than other sectors. Right now more cyber jobs exist than professionals to fill them. Our task as educators now becomes making cyber training widely available so we keep pace with the rapid job growth.
Who better to focus that training on than young adults who were born into a digital world?
High school students interested in cyber careers got a jump start on their training this summer at the USC Upstate 2025 Summer Cyber Camp, held in the university’s Upstate Crime Analysis Center (UCAC) in Greenville. Using the nationally recognized CyberPatriot curriculum, the week-long camp introduced students to real-world cybersecurity principles and practical coding skills. Students tackled individual and team challenges throughout the week, and they battled in a CyberPatriot competition on Friday to test what they learned.
“The demand for cyber professionals is growing exponentially, and our job is to inspire and teach the next generation to continue the work of keeping our country safe from cyber attacks,” said Major Gen. (Ret.) Glenn Davis, who brings his experience in the Air Force to his role as director of the National Security and Government Institute (NSGI) at USC Upstate. “The students we saw this week impressed their instructors and left us feeling hopeful about the future.”
One of those instructors was Davis’s former Air Force colleague, Col. (Ret.) Martha Monroe, who spent 30+ years leading cyber initiatives in the military and IT departments for major corporations like Bank of America and Pepsi. Monroe co-taught the course with UCAC director Breanna Haney, who added her experience in crime analysis to the coursework.
What set the USC Upstate 2025 Summer Cyber Camp apart from the other 76 CyberPatriot camp sites across the country was its enhanced focus on college and career awareness. In addition to core cybersecurity topics like system vulnerabilities and network defense, and technical skills like Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, students took part in activities designed to expose them to higher education pathways and future careers.
“The CyberPatriot curriculum provides the foundation for skill-building and understanding the field. We build on that foundation to make a camp experience that introduces high school students to a college classroom and time with professionals who share the stories behind their careers,” said Dr. Carrie Silver, Director of Recruiting and Marketing for USC Upstate Greenville and Cyber Camp coordinator. “Our instructors and guest speakers brought the content to life with their experiences working in cybersecurity and criminal justice. It makes an impact when students hear Greenville folks talk about times they faced a major challenge or had to shift a project to match new cyber capabilities.”
A common theme shared by instructors and speakers was how technical skills and credentials can get you in the door for a job interview, but you need to be able to do more than code to be successful in the job.
“Our career paths illustrate to the students that you can’t succeed on technical skills alone. You have to also build interpersonal and leadership skills,” Monroe said. “So we intentionally challenged the students to occasionally step away from their computers and get out of their comfort zones.”
Silver agreed that getting them out of their comfort zones was built into each day of the camp. “We gave them team competitions and opportunities to solve problems together,” she said. “We even created a lunch networking event where students learned how to network with local professionals. It may have felt awkward at first, but by the end of the week the students made a group text so they could stay in touch, so I’d say the week was a success.”
The USC Upstate 2025 Summer Cyber Camp was made possible by the support of the NSGI; the UCAC; Kim, Lahey, and Killough Law Firm; and Solutions Unlimited.
For more information about future camps and USC Upstate’s cybersecurity programs, visit uscupstate.edu, follow USC Upstate Greenville on Instagram @uscupstategvl or Facebook @USCUpstateGVL, or email UpstateGreenville@uscupstate.edu.
About CyberPatriot: CyberPatriot Camps are a part of the U.S. Air and Space Forces Association’s National Youth Cyber Education Program, designed to inspire K-12 students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Learn more at www.uscyberpatriot.org.