Pitt CyberCamp fosters interest in growing cybersecurity field

Pitt CyberCamp fosters interest in growing cybersecurity field

https://triblive.com/news/education-classroom/pitt-cybercamp-fosters-interest-in-growing-cybersecurity-field/

Publish Date: 2026-06-23 10:22:00

Source Domain: triblive.com

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Khadija Hassan knows that with great power comes great responsibility with the skills she’s learning at the University of Pittsburgh’s CyberCamp.
“I’m interested in threat hunting,” said Hassan, a rising senior at Keystone Oaks High School. “You run different tasks to see if someone is trying to attack you. You check for people and investigate their digital footprint.”
Hassan, 17, of Castle Shannon, is one of 180 campers at this week’s Air Force Association CyberCamp, now in its 10th year. It’s held in Oakland and, this year for the first time, at Pitt’s Greensburg campus.
The free, weeklong camp teaches cybersecurity principles, ethics, skills and future career opportunities.
Since its inception, more than 1,400 students have completed the camp.
“Pittsburgh is doing a good job of recognizing that cybersecurity is a need,” said Beth Schwanke, executive director of Pitt’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security. “We also have education and training opportunities to fill it.”
Schwanke said that, while demand for the camp has remained consistently high, the students’ skill levels in technology and cybersecurity have increased. She attributes that to more area high schools offering cybersecurity programming.
“When we started 10 years ago, there wasn’t much cybersecurity being offered in schools,” Schwanke said. “The really exciting thing is that there are schools now teaching cybersecurity, and those kids are coming to camp and still learning new things.”
A June study from Cyber.org found that 41% of educators nationwide reported their students receive cybersecurity education — slightly lower than it was in 2020. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports more than 572,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs.
“There’s a ton of open cybersecurity jobs in the United States and that’s changing due to artificial intelligence,” Schwanke said. “What the market looks like is undergoing a shift, but there’s constantly unfilled jobs.”
Pitt uses curriculum from CyberPatriot, a national youth cyber education program, to drive the week’s lessons. Camp instructors tailor the lessons to fit campers’ needs — and keep up with advancements in technology and artificial intelligence.
Kate Ulreich, engagement leader at Pitt Digital, the university’s information technology department, said camp lessons don’t rely heavily on artificial intelligence. Rather, instructors focus on getting students to understand the logic and reasoning behind the computer systems.
“It’s the reason behind why something works, and that’s what we’re trying to teach them,” Ulerich said.
Teachers also emphasize the ethics behind cybersecurity.
“We emphasize we teach skills, mostly defensive skills, but they could be used for bad,” said Michael Caglia, camp instructor and a computer science teacher at Westmoreland County Community College. “We do explain about using the ‘superpowers’ for good.”
The camp attracts students from all levels, and it has a reach beyond Greater Pittsburgh. Krish Putrevu, 12, of Loudoun County, Va., looked forward to an end-of-camp competition where students have to fend off a cyber attack.
Putrevu said he was interested in learning about “virtual machines,” software emulating a physical computer system that allows security teams to test threats without risking the primary computer.
Putrevu described it as a “computer system inside a computer system.”
Abygail Farmer, a rising sophomore at St. Joseph’s High School in Harrison, said she’s interested in a future career in cybersecurity or computer science.
“I like the codes, and how different components work together to make one big machine to do one big job,” said Farmer, 15.