Bernice Brezina, Dean of the CSM School of Professional and Technical Studies, told us CSM serves a diverse student body that includes recent high school graduates and adults seeking continuous education.
“Over 60% of our credit-seeking students are 21 years of age or younger, but we also have a very significant adult learner population,” she said. “We see a lot of working professionals interested in STEM programs. In both cases, the program offers an affordable, accessible, and relatively low-risk opportunity for learners to get their foot in the door.”
After graduating from the community college, those looking to complete a bachelor’s degree at a four-year university benefit from CSM’s transfer agreements with 49 partner universities nationwide.
More than Two Decades of Experience in Virtual Instruction
All classes and student services at CSM are currently available virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic — which, in many ways, the college was prepared for.
“We already had a pretty strong online component to our programs because we have so many working professionals — many of our courses were already being provided online,” Bernice said. “It was easier for us to adapt because we had such a talented group of faculty that already had been educating students virtually in one course or another.”
It helped, of course, that faculty members instructing the school’s STEM pathway are technologists at heart — and thus had experience with the logistics of managing online content. But Angela Small, Director of Media Relations at the college’s Public Information Office, said other challenges existed.
“Technology-wise, the transition seemed easy — too easy — but we didn’t escape the psychological trauma caused by the pandemic,” Angela said. “Even though it’s ingrained in our culture, the prospect of working, and learning, virtually took everyone a little by surprise. Of course, the coronavirus wasn’t anything we could have imagined, but we understood very early into going to remote operations that our students – all of our communities, really – were going to need help beyond the classroom requirements.”
To support students after closing campuses, the college provided laptops, lists of local internet connections, and resources to address food insecurity.
This is reflected in the school’s mission statement: The College of Southern Maryland enhances lives and strengthens the economic vitality of a diverse and changing region by providing affordable postsecondary education, workforce development, and cultural and personal enrichment opportunities.
“What distinguishes us from larger universities is that we are very focused on equity,” she said.
Financial Aid Opportunities and NSF Grants
In early August, CSM announced that the U.S. Department of Education granted the school $1,289,511 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARE) Act, as well as an additional $1,289,511 to provide emergency aid directly to students.
Overall, this puts it in a position to award more than $9 million in financial assistance to students this year, whether through grants, scholarships, or the CSM Foundation.
“There’s a wealth of opportunity at CSM for students in cybersecurity, computer science, and engineering,” Bernice told us. “Chris is the principal investigator (PI) on a grant that aims to expand the pipeline of qualified professionals to help meet the workforce demand in the area for cybersecurity.”
CSM was also awarded $953,243 as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, which includes 96 scholarships.
“We don’t offer CompTIA certifications directly, but our coursework parallels the aptitude required to earn them,” he said. “After attending the appropriate courses, a student can confidently sit for an A+ certification, for example, which is a great door opener around the naval base.”To ensure students get a good return on investment on their scholarships and hard-earned dollars, Christopher said the school arms them with curricula tailored to industry-standard certifications.
The school does offer software-specific courses, such as Microsoft Window Server Administration, which provides students with the skill set needed to deploy, manage, maintain and monitor the server while ensuring high availability of servers in a network.
“Our cybersecurity program is really multifaceted,” Christopher said. “You can’t be a specialist — you need to be a jack of all trades to be effective in cybersecurity. You have to understand networks and how routing and switching works. You need to understand servers and computers because that’s what people are breaking into. It’s a matter of knowing applications, operating systems, and the underlying network infrastructure.”
A Focus on Cloud Computing & Getting the Community Back to Work
Moving forward, Christopher said the Information Services Technology degree will be increasingly focused on cloud computing. The move comes ahead of Amazon’s tentative decision to build a headquarters outside of Washington, D.C.