National Park College (NPC) announced a new Associate of Applied Science Degree in
Networking and Cybersecurity this week. The degree was approved by the Board of Trustees
in December and by the Arkansas Division of Higher Education Coordinating Board Friday.
The program revises NPC’s computer networking degree to include both networking and
cybersecurity. The new program begins in the fall of 2021. Existing networking students
that enrolled last fall will have the option to migrate to this new degree.
Instructor Robert Feighl explained the significance of the changes noting, “It means
that each year NPC will be graduating a group of students that will be highly skilled
in networking, but most importantly, skilled in cyber defense and incident response.
In other words, they will have the skills to help protect their companies, their homes,
their friends and family from attacks that occur every day in the cyber realm.”
“We face an ever-increasing threat to our online safety and privacy, and we need teams
of individuals trained to combat these threats. Now, students interested in computer
networking will continue to get that training along with essential cyber security
training,” said Feighl.
The College was awarded a $49,000 Regional Workforce Grant from the Arkansas Division
of Higher Education in December. The funds are being used to equip a new cybersecurity
classroom which will provide students access to a cyber range. “The new range will
allow students to hone their skills by competing in real world scenarios in a virtual
network environment where common cyber-attacks will be performed, and the students
will practice responding to and defending against these attacks in a fun and exciting
way,” Feighl noted.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects a 32% job growth rate for information
security analysts between 2018 and 2028. “Our Networking and Cyber Security graduates
will be able to gain employment quickly. This is such a high demand field that we
anticipate employers will be contacting us to fill vacancies, and these are very lucrative
positions. Entry-level positions can pay $60,000 and above,” said Business and Technical
Division Chair, Jennifer Lyons.
