Dr. Pauline Mosley, assistant chair of Information Technology at the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University, created a cybersecurity camp dedicated to getting girls and young women interested in STEM careers. She is conducting her robotic classes through zoom.

Dr. Mosley is teaching Introduction to Cybersecurity on the master’s program as well as running a GenCyber camp. She is trying to mentor young women to reduce the gender gap in STEM and particularly in cybersecurity – where women only represent 2% of the program.

The camp has for goal to raise awareness of cybersecurity, engage students in cybersecurity, and finally lessen the gap for women and minorities in that field. It aims to equip them with more knowledge and encourage them to consider pursuing cybersecurity and computer science as a viable career. In the long-term, she is hoping to get women in the cybersecurity field from an administrative level to CIO levels.

The camp is open to young girls and boys with teams led by a young woman. This is a way to encourage women to promote and cultivate leadership and decision-making skills so they’re respected and valued by everyone, including their male counterparts. It works as an education device for both men and women. The camp is for now running virtually due to COVID-19 but is hoping to resume back to face to face modality next year.

Dr. Mosley is using this opportunity to expand the modalities and the pedagogy of how she normally teaches programming and robotics to adapt it into a remote virtual setting. This pandemic is leading teachers to become more innovative and come up with a way to deliver training remotely with robotics.