We had the opportunity to talk to three Cybersecurity students in the OU Polytechnic Institute, all in varying stages of their academic careers. Andrew Deerdoff is a first year student in the undergraduate program, Shelbie Raney is on the cusp of graduation, and Colin Torbett is pursuing his masters degree. Here’s what they had to say about their experiences in OUPI and on the OU-Tulsa campus!
A lot of people I know in the IT world have told me cybersecurity is the way to go. I work at Geek Squad right now, and they told me I ought to get into more internal corporate work. And cybersecurity caught my eye…I think it would be fun to do probing, firewall detections, programming stuff to see if people can break in.
It's been great! Dr. Hassell’s been great. There’s only 10 of us that are doing cybersecurity…because it’s such a small class, talking with them and getting to know them has made things easier.
Because classes are smaller, professors are way more involved, which is one of the main positives. It’s so much easier to contact them instead of being in a big lecture hall. It helps you build a relationship. They help you with internships, too—I’ve been emailing Hassell about building a website for all my projects and getting his input on that.
The community is great. Especially Student Affairs. They're really amazing. I love the people at Student Affairs. There's always something to do here. If you're a student that needs food, there's always food. If you have a class that interferes with one of the talks that Student affairs is having, they always put the food out on those tables when you're coming in.
It's been very good. Dr. Hassell, Dr. Riaz, Dr. Reed, Dr. Freeze—there's a lot of doctors, haha! They're all very supportive…Cybersecurity leadership restructured to allow me to have a thesis project.
For starters, if you are rural, like me, they will work with you. I had to wait to come in today because the roads are bad. I live over in Haskell, which is close to Muskogee, so my roads are messed up from the snow. I emailed Dr. Wong and he let me attend class via Zoom today. There's that aspect—your faculty will work with you if you have issues.
100%. That’s another reason why I wanted to come back and get a degree—it gives me an opportunity to cover the fundamentals in places where I have gaps…and maybe [receive] a certification or two along the way.
It’s a great experience to meet and see all different kinds of people in all different walks of IT or finance or venture capital or all kinds of things. Chad is really well connected. It’s really cool that we as students get to be exposed to his network of people and that they’re willing to come to a school and talk to students for an hour or so.
Being smaller, it’s a more tight knit community. You can walk from one end of the Norman campus to the other and not see a single person you know, but here, you almost know everybody, which is kinda cool! And since OUPI is such a new program, and they’re building it out, I would say that you have all the opportunities ahead of you to come here and pursue a degree.
