Case Study Fall 2019

Students Tackle Cybersecurity Concerns for CHSS Case Study Competition

In November, CHSS held its third annual case study competition in which six teams proposed solutions to address cybersecurity issues that students might face on a college campus.

This is the first time in the competition’s history that students from other colleges were eligible to participate. For this year’s competition each team was tasked with choosing a cybersecurity issue from a predetermined list. They then had to research the issue and come up with a campaign to inform students from a fictional university called Garden State University (GSU) about this issue for the Fall 2020 semester leading up to the presidential election. 

Teams were allotted 30 minutes to present their issue, connect it to their major(s) in some way and explain how their campaign will solve the issue if it were to be implemented on GSU’s campus. After each presentation, questions were asked by audience members and a panel of judges (Samatha Kennendy, an Information Literacy Librarian for Campbell Library and Lieutenant Matthew Paley, a Law & Justice Studies alumni). 

The respective topics, teams and coaches are as follows:

1. Analysis of Russian-U.S. Relations in the 2016 Election

    Coach: Dr. Kathy Javian, Lecturer, Political Science & Economics Department

    Participants: Dawson Kipphut

                         Carter Laborde

                         Prathyush Kotamarthi

                         Laura Bell

2. Is Your Online Privacy Actually Private?

    Coach: Dr. Ellen Miller, Professor and Chair, Philosophy & Religion Studies Department

    Participants: Zach Parisi

                         Donald Roberts

3. Cybersecurity: Deep Fakes

    Coach: Professor Tiffany Tillman, Instructor, Law & Justice Studies Department

    Participants: Jacob Marks

                        Joshua Figueroa

4. Elections Influenced by Russian Ads?

    Coach: Dr. Sandra Joy, Professor, Sociology & Anthropology Department

    Participants: Michael Webster

                         Joanna Glanville

                         Crystal Stackhouse

5. Disinformation

    Coach: Dr. Kimberly Houser, Assistant Professor, Law & Justice Studies Department

    Participants: Kevin Connelly

                         Kalyn Schofield

6. Developing Best Practices in Cyber Security

    Coach: Dr. Katherine Turner 

    Participants: Ethan Strong

                         Greg Anquillino

Ultimately, the team led by Dr. Houser won the competition while Dr. Turner’s team came in second place. 

Alexandria Brooks is a rising senior journalism major and CHSS public relations intern, who is a regular contributor of content and articles about CHSS.