Cybersecurity Consultant Presents to IT Students

Karen Sprenger from Lake Missoula Group (LMG) Security presented to Missoula College IT students on September 30th. Karen led discussion on careers in cybersecurity, what employers are looking for in applicants, and "Tales from the Trenches". Included in the "Tales from the Trenches" was a demonstration on the impact of Ransomware on enterprise data and how LMG assists organizations to prevent and recover from a data breech.

Missoula College hosts Information Technology Advisory Meeting

The Advisory Committee for Missoula College's Information Technology Degree and Certificate programs met on Friday April 21, 2017. Advisory committees serve an important role in connecting education with business and industry. Advisory committee input is essential in guiding Career Technical Education (CTE) programs of study and enhancing their relevance. The committee reviewed the academic program's curriculum, student enrollment, and graduate data. Internships with local businesses were highlighted and new initiative such as the work-based learning models were discussed. The meeting was held at the new Missoula College River Campus. Following the meeting members of the committee were give a tour of the new Missoula College campus. Beginning Autumn Term 2017, all classes for IT students will be on the new campus.

Gallagher Presents EHR Synthetic Records Research at IEEE Conference

Information Technology Program Director and Professor Tom Gallagher presented the paper Using the CareMap with Health Incidents Statistics for Generating the Realistic Synthetic Electronic Healthcare Record at the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics in Chicago. The paper further develops the privacy enhancing technology of the Realistic Synthetic Electronic Health Record (RS-EHR) for protecting personal health information (PHI). The RS-EHR was originally developed by Gallagher and Dube (Massey University, NZ) in 2013 in an effort to preserve patient privacy and security. It seeks to limit secondary use of patient PHI through the generation of synthetic EHR data.

Burke Delivers Privacy Presentation at Security Conference

Adjunct Professor and Cybersecurity Consultant Dianne Burke delivered the presentation Digital Fingerprints and Footprints – Privacy in the Digital Age at the 2017 Big Sky Information Security Conference held at the University of Montana on April 19. Her presentation discussed how digital information is generated and collected in our daily lives both intentionally and unintentionally. Professor Burke described how data collection takes place through common technologies such as cell phones, mobile applications, telematics and GPS tracking are covered with an emphasis on how personal privacy is impacted. Further details are found: http://www.umt.edu/security-conference/

Computer Science Teacher Licensure

A partnership between faculty members from Computer Science, Education, and Applied Computing & Engineering Technology has developed the first K12 teacher licensure education program in the State of Montana for computer science. Limited opportunities in coding and programming are available to students at most high schools in Montana. A major obstacle has been the lack of qualified teachers in the curricular area of computer science. This important program of study has been developed to assist K12 schools by providing teacher education in the computer science domain. The curriculum for these teachers in training will include completion of CSCI 105 Computer Fluency and ITS 150 Cisco Networking I at Missoula College. Intentions are to enroll students in this new program by Autumn 2017.