The Longitudinal Impact of IT Self-Efficacy and Interest on Intent to Major

Although enrollment in information technology has increased, it cannot match the growth of the IT labor market with more students needed to enter into the IT field to fulfill demand. This research follows high school students for two years regarding the choice of IT as a college major using the lens of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) to better understand career decision-making over time. Self-efficacy, interest, and intent to major relationships are examined both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Findings show that IT self-efficacy has a significant positive effect on interest and intent to major respectively and interest in IT has a significant positive effect on intent to major in IT. These are consistent with previous research in SCCT. Contrarily, only IT self-efficacy increases over time, while intent to major decreases during this same two-year time period

CIMoRE: Developing a framework for a critical infrastructure modeling and response environment

Activities for individuals, organizations, and government agencies to plan for, protect from, and respond to cases of emergency or attack generally focus on paper and pencil planning sessions that don’t include computer simulated information or decision data. Modeling critical infrastructures and cyber physical systems has become a growing research area, as well as a common theme in training activities for cyber security practitioners and first responders over the past decade. One approach to modeling multiple critical infrastructures is to model all critical infrastructures in a single environment by converting them into a single standard protocol and implementing them in a single testbed. This dissertation provides the road map of how the Critical Infrastructure Modeling and Response Environment (CIMoRE) could be developed to allow all critical infrastructure subsectors to be modeled in a single TCP/IP testbed. The Internet Scale Event and Attack Generation Environment (ISEAGE) is the testbed that was used as the backbone of this framework. This dissertation addresses three main problems with using a unified TCP/IP testbed for modeling. First, the physical world critical infrastructure subsectors must be turned into network representations of themselves. This includes transforming the characteristics of their traffic into TCP/IP traffic and node data, as well as representing interdependencies between the critical infrastructure subsectors. Second, the ISEAGE testbed, its operational software ISEFLOW, and the ISEFLOW configuration file needed to be modified to allow for critical infrastructure subsector modeling. Additionally, the concept of network delay had to be added to ISEAGE. And, third, concept of traffic generation had to be added to ISEAGE to allow modeling of increases and decreases of traffic volumes for critical infrastructure subsectors. Along with traffic generation is the need to introduce events that simulate real world disruptions that could stem from that traffic generation.</p

When Size Does Matter: Identifying Multilevel Factors Contributing to IT Major Choice

The current enrollment crisis in information technology (IT) has left employers scrambling to find qualified individuals to fill positions in IT within the corporation. One issue facilitating this dearth of workers is the lack of individuals pursuing IT-related majors. This research uses high school students to investigate the reasons behind individual choice to major in IT. Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) is used as a theoretical framework for better understanding these decisions and group-level contextual supports/barriers are investigated in a multilevel context. Findings show strong support for school size as a significant school-level predictor of intention to major in IT and as a moderating influence on the effect of interest on intent to major