Champlain College’s Leahy Center receives $755K in Omnibus funding

Vermont Business Magazine Champlain College’s Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity, a world-class laboratory providing digital forensics and cybersecurity services to community-based organizations, is set to receive more than $755,000 from the Omnibus Appropriations bill thanks to a congressionally directed spending request from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

The cybersecurity market—driven by rapidly expanding e-commerce, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, cloud security and more—is projected to grow from $156 billion in 2022 to $376 billion in 2029, a 13% compound annual growth rate. An increasingly digital economy, combined with frequent and severe cyberattacks that have heightened during the pandemic, has left organizations vulnerable to exploitation and exposure.

The Leahy Center will use these federal funds to strengthen cyber defenses for Vermont-based organizations, including municipalities, schools, nonprofits, and small businesses, to reduce the risk of cyber threats and to support the needs of local law enforcement, while simultaneously educating the next cybersecurity workforce.

“We are so grateful to Senator Leahy for his long-standing support of Champlain College and his significant efforts to strengthen Vermont,” said Alex Hernandez, the school’s president-elect who will join the campus community later this spring. “This funding supports Champlain’s career-forward approach to education by expanding hands-on, experiential learning for students pursuing high-growth careers like cybersecurity. By protecting Vermont’s digital economy, and developing the state’s future workforce, Champlain can be an engine of opportunity and growth.”

Teams of undergraduate students, led by expert cybersecurity faculty, will work with small businesses and other organizations to assess organizational risks and vulnerabilities, make recommendations, and assist with implementation to improve data security. This investment strengthens the technology infrastructure for Burlington businesses and nonprofits, and distinguishes Vermont as a cybersecurity hub for a talented and trained workforce.

“This funding helps Champlain serve our community in two important ways,” Dr. Scott Stevens, Dean of the Division of Information Technology & Sciences, said. “It helps safeguard the private data of Vermonters by supporting regional organizations with critical cybersecurity assessment tools, education, and services. It also enables The Leahy Center to expand training for the next generation of cyber defense warriors.”

For more information about the Leahy Center for Digital Investigation, please visit https://www.champlain.edu/centers-of-experience/the-leahy-center.

About Champlain College: Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and more than 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain’s distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. For the seventh year in a row, Champlain was named a “Most Innovative School” in the North by U.S. News & World Report’s “America's Best Colleges” rankings, and was listed among The Princeton Review’s “The Best 387 Colleges” in 2022. Champlain is also featured in the 2021 Fiske Guide to Colleges as one of the “best and most interesting schools” in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain and was recognized as a 2020 College of Distinction for its “Engagement, Teaching, Community, and Outcomes.” For more information, visit www.champlain.edu.