Morgan State University’s Cybersecurity Assurance and Policy Center is using a National Science Foundation grant to implement the agency’s novel CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service program.
“The Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish a plan to elevate a consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCUs/MSIs), assess their ability to participate and compete in engineering, research, and development activities, and report the plan to Congress,” says Laura M. McAndrews, media operations, Department of the Air Force Public Affairs. “The goal is to grow and diversify the available pool of scientists and engineers to support more comprehensive solutions to the department’s most challenging problems.”
There are currently 14 UARCs in the U.S., located at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) including Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Texas at Austin. There are currently no HBCUs with Carnegie Classification Research 1 status, but leaders at the 11 institutions with R2 status believe that being selected for this contract will help elevate the school to R1.
“We set our strategic plan that targets Carnegie R1 by 2030,” says Dr. Charles Weatherford, vice president of research at Florida A&M University (FAMU), one of the 11 HBCUs designated R2. “Access to these funds and facilities that the UARC will provide is going to propel one or two HBCUs into R1.”
Tactical autonomy
The new UARC’s research focus will be tactical autonomy, the development of autonomous systems, and technologies for military missions. The 2016 Defense Science Board study on autonomy concluded that the DoD must accelerate its exploitation of autonomy to realize the potential military value and to remain ahead of adversaries, says McAndrews.
