Fontbonne students get valuable lessons in cyber security
Increasingly, students at the Catholic high school for girls in Bay Ridge are showing an interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects that used to be dominated by males, according to school officials.
This past summer, five Fontbonne students took part in a special program offered by the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering that focused on computer science and cyber security.
The two-week, tuition-free program was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Security Agency and the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. The program was offered in two sections, with 20 students participating in each session. The students were selected through a competitive application process.
The Introduction to Computer Science and Cyber Security course included lectures, hands-on projects and day trips to the offices of Google and Facebook to prepare the students for the nationwide CSAW High School Cyber Forensics Challenge, an annual competition hosted annually by NYU Poly.