NCSU Cybersecurity Practicum Sponsorship Opportunity

We are accepting applications for Cybersecurity Practicum projects from potential sponsors for the Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 CSC 472/595 practicum courses.

The Cybersecurity Practicum course is designed to provide graduate students, and senior computer science students who are participating in the cybersecurity concentration with an opportunity to apply cybersecurity principles and computer science to solve a “real world” cybersecurity problem.

Students work in teams of four to six students with instructors to guide students through the projects. Sponsors are asked to help mentor their student team throughout the semester. Our priority is to educate students and prepare them for their next chapter by using “real-world” scenarios and mentorship.

Our goal is to help students integrate their technical expertise with their professional communication skills - writing, speaking, project management and teaming – and to prepare them to enter the workforce.

By participating in our practicum program, sponsors will have the chance to meet and work with Computer Science seniors and graduate students who will be entering the professional arena, making it a great recruiting opportunity! Please consider joining us during the upcoming 2026-2027 academic year.

The fee ($12,500 for undergraduate teams, $15,000 for graduate teams) goes toward administration of the Practicum course. This fee does not imply any type of contractual agreement between our sponsors and SCI/students.

Project Proposal Information

Projects should be non-critical to the mission of your organization. Good projects are those that are relevant and interesting to you, but that perhaps have been relegated to being back-burner projects or nice-to-haves.

Project descriptions are presented to students on the first day of class. Students will have a short amount of time to choose and bid for 3 of their favorites. A good project description will be clear and succinct so that students can quickly get a sense of what the project is about and what it would entail to solve the problem. It is often helpful to provide preliminary system requirements or concrete use cases/scenarios to help illustrate your vision for the project.

When drafting your project description, it is useful to clearly identify the core set of features (i.e., minimum viable product) and to label the additional incremental features as stretch goals that would be nice to have if time permits.

Submission Instructions

Step 1

Download and complete the Project Proposal Template.

Step 2

You may upload the document to your shared collaborative space, then send a link to the project proposal to Laura Rodgers, Director of Cybersecurity Practice, at ldrodger@ncsu.edu, or you may email the document to Laura Rodgers. The project proposal will be reviewed and suggestions may be made to make the project suitable for a student project.

For additional information, please contact Laura Rodgers