Spring 2019 ITM Undergraduate Advising Notes are now available! Click the link to see them…

The Spring 2018 ITM Undergraduate Advising Notes are now available to assist undergraduates with their Spring 2018 course selection and planning. Also available to assist in your course planning is the Pop course browser from ITM alum Eric Tendian: https://pop.weclarify.com/spring2018.html.
Spring 2018 ITM Undergraduate Advising Notes: http://www.itm.iit.edu/data/Spring2018ITMUndergraduateAdvisingNotes.pdf

The Department of Information Technology and Management and the Center for Cyber Security and Forensics Education are pleased to announce that we will host the Fifth Annual Women in Cyber Security (WiCyS) Conference. This National Science Foundation funded event will be held March 23 through March 24, 2018 at the Hilton Chicago. It is the mission of WiCyS to bring together women in cybersecurity from academia, research and industry from across the United States. The event is exclusively designed as the forum for speakers and guests to exchange knowledge, experience, networking, and mentoring to raise interest in the field of cybersecurity. We will be seeking volunteers to assist with the conference and to meet arriving delegates at the airports later this fall.

ITM Associate Chair Ray Trygstad will serve as conference co-chair, while Amber Chatellier and Angela Jarka of the ITM Department comprise the conference logistics staff.

Student Membership in the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) is now free since their merger with CompTIA. Among the significant benefits provided to student members is 33% to 60% savings on CompTIA exam vouchers & training products, but there are many more including great networking opportunities. Chicago has one of the largest AITP Chapters in the country and is very active. This costs NOTHING and every ITM student should sign up for their free student membership at https://www.aitp.org/join-now/Register/Student/ and then sign onto the Chicago Chapter email list at https://aitpchicago.com/membership/join-aitp-mailing-list-only/.

The U.S. Department of Defense is offering Cyber Information Assurance Scholarships to U.S. citizens who will be Juniors, Seniors, or graduate students in the fall of 2017. This is a one-year scholarship covering full books, tuition, and a $22,500 stipend for undergraduates or a $30,000 stipend for graduate students. The scholarships are renewable but will require a new application each year. Payback is one year of federal service in a cyber security or digital forensics role for each year of scholarship, or four years of military service. Applicants must be eligible for a security clearance. Applicants are not limited to students in the Department of Information Technology and Management but may also be students in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Business, but because of the nature of the application, knowledge of and a clear understanding of cyber security is a necessity. A printed and signed physical application must be delivered to the ITM Department office, Perlstein Hall suite 223 later than 8:30am Monday May 22nd so we can evaluate and include your scholarship in our funding request, which is due May 31st. The application and details of the scholarship are included below. (Note: if you downloaded the announcement or application prior to 11:00am on Wednesday, April 19th, please download them again as the DOD provided us with updated copies.)
ATTACHMENT C IA Scholarship and Vacancy Announcement 2017
ATTACHMENT D NEW Student Application 2017-2018 (site 1)
ATTACHMENT D NEW Student Application 2017-2018 (site 2)

Contact Professor Ray Trygstad for questions: trygstad@iit.edu. Please include “DOD Cyber Scholarship” as the first thing in the subject line of your email.

Advising notes for the 2017 summer and fall semesters are now available for undergraduate students in ITM. Updated 3/21/17. Three locations for maximum redundancy! Fall 2017 ITM Undergraduate Advising Notes
http://naperville.rice.iit.edu/Fall2017ITMUndergraduateAdvisingNotes.pdf
http://itm.iit.edu/data/Fall2017ITMUndergraduateAdvisingNotes.pdf

A new IT professional association will emerge this spring as CompTIA, home of the A+, Linux+, and Network+ certifications absorbs the Association of Information Technology Professionals. From these pieces the new association will emerge, and students have the opportunity to get onboard at the ground floor with a very minimal expense: twenty-nine bucks! See the full details at http://www.land.certification.comptia.org/CompTIA-IT-Pro-Association.

Graduate, undergraduate, and women’s scholarships are offered by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education of the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)². They will begin accepting applications on February 28, 2017 for graduate and undergraduate scholarships of up to $5,000, and are currently accepting applications for women’s scholarships of $8,000 or more. One undergraduate student may also be selected for the Harold F. Tipton Memorial Scholarship; the most recent award recipient for this scholarship is Kyle Dean Murbach from Wheaton, IL. Please see the (ISC)² scholarship page at https://www.isc2cares.org/Scholarships/ for full details.

The Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) 2017 conference will be held in Tucson, AZ on March 31st-April 1st. Scholarships are available for both faculty and students to attend the conference (details at ; in the past these scholarships, funded by NSF, have covered airfare and lodging. Student and faculty scholarship applications are now open through November 21st. Notifications will go out December 5th. Conference registration costs are nominal–$30 for students, $150 for faculty.

The Call for Participation for Presentations, Workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Sessions, Lightning Talks, Panels, and Posters is open, and submissions will be accepted until November 6 (details at https://www.csc.tntech.edu/wicys/participate/)

All ITM women enrolled in Cyber Forensics and Security, and all third- and fourth-year undergraduate women, are strongly encouraged to participate—lightning talks and posters are easy and can be drawn from work already done—and to apply for these scholarships.

Free books are always nice. There are a fair number of textbooks released regularly under the Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation Licenses, and not surprisingly many of them are on IT subjects…oh, and on discrete mathematics. (We hear ITM students may need a little boost there.) These books may be a good supplement to a course or may just help you learn something new on your own. Read more…