GW requires all CSIA scholarship students to complete the "Seminar" course extending for all four semesters of their scholarship programs. Seminar is GW's distinctive course that underlies its success in educating and placing Cyber Corps graduates in federal agencies. Students' participation in Seminar begins the process of building working relationships that become a very important success factor in their future careers. Seminar is the unifying and reinforcing experience that prepares students with the knowledge, perspective, and expertise to perform competently in their future government positions, repay the federal government its hefty investments in their education, and serve their country.

At a dedicated weekly time during both academic years of the program, for a full twelve credit hours of instruction, Seminar brings CSIA students together and guides them through a curriculum designed to give them a thorough understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Government in Cyber Security, an overview of the technical aspects of Cyber Security, and familiarity with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and with cyber legislation currently proposed and under discussion. Over the two-year period, Seminar essentially grooms GW's CyberCorps students to succeed by developing their technical, analytical, managerial, presentation, and writing skills with regard to CSIA issues. It provides a baseline of common knowledge of relevant federal policies and mandates and an informed picture of federal government roles, responsibilities, and processes. It reviews basics of U.S. Constitution and law and steeps students in the CSIA elements necessary to planning federal computer systems within a framework that is cognizant of privacy, cost, risk, civil liberties, and public acceptance.

The students study current federal civilian and Defense Department policy and compliance programs by examining the FISMA process and the related set of security controls.  They engage in the entire Security Certification and Accreditation, audit, and System Security Plan processes. The two-year GW Seminar readies students to contribute to a government Information Assurance environment on their first day in the federal workforce.

Seminar begins each fall with second-year students presenting their federal agency summer internship experiences to the cohort of their peers and new first year CSIA students. With input from both faculty and second-year students, first-year students prepare resumes, develop and refine interview skills, and discuss how their background, education and experience will contribute to their success in the federal workplace. GW Career Center professionals speak to the group and provide individual advice and the opportunity to videotape practice interviews and review the results.

In Seminar, ongoing topics of discussion include threats, attacks, and vulnerabilities as well as mechanisms for mitigation, detection, and reconstitution of systems. Students are constantly called on and engaged to consider these matters. In the laboratory adjacent to their classroom, students have hands-on opportunities to develop System Security Plans incorporating Plans of Action and Milestones to secure the lab system. They practice making workstations Federal Desktop Core Configuration compliant and hardening all servers to the DoD Gold Disk standard.  They follow this by performing audit, Certification and Accreditation for each system.

Each week, the instructor assigns students to discuss a current attack affecting Federal systems.  In examining each attack, students study the system vulnerabilities, effective mitigation strategies that are both technical, policy-oriented, and correspond to the FISMA controls that would have prevented the attack. These student presentations lead to lively and informative discussions among the students, instructor, and guest lecturers who are able to add key insights, knowledge and observations. In addition, the process effectively builds esprit de corps and public speaking skills, both essential to the development of these future government cadres.

More experienced students develop a System Security Plan for a fictitious Government system that is iteratively critiqued and refined through interaction of both the instructor and student. By the end of students' two years of participation in Seminar, they are well-versed in the use of government processes to analyze computer systems, perform risk assessments and document systems' FISMA compliance. As a result of these exercises, one student reported a sense of "standing out from the veteran employees" and subsequently received a job offer during his summer internship

An average of one new government official per week speaks, reinforcing concepts, sharing insights, and meeting informally with scholarship students. The table below shows approximately 25% of recent speakers and topics presented at Seminar.

Speaker Name	Affiliation	Topic
Mike Jacobs	Former Information Assurance Director at the National Security Agency	Observations from a career in cyber security in the federal government
Paul Kurtz	Good Harbor; Former Cyber Official in the White House under Presidents Clinton and Bush, DHS Transition team member	International challenges in CSIA
Mischel Kwon	V ice President of Public Sector Security Solutions for the Worldwide Professional Services unit at  RSA , formerly Director of US-CERT	Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP)
Jim Lewis	Center for Strategic and International Studies	Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency
John Olcott, Sameer Bhalotra, and Erik Hopkins	Congressional staffers	Cyber on Capitol Hill
Chris Painter	Director of Cyber security for the White House National Security Council	CSIA from multiple perspectives in government – White House, Law Enforcement, and Legislative
Ron Ross	U. S. National Institute of Standards and Technology	FISMA and Risk Assessment
Neill Sciarrone	Detice/BAE, former senior director of cyber security and information-sharing policy at the White House	Cyber at the White House
Ron Rivest	MIT	Security of Voting Systems
Dave Stender	U. S. Internal Revenue Service Chief Information Security Officer	Compliance and Security

Seminar provides SFS students valuable informal networking and contacts. Personal interactions with speakers, program alumni, and instructors have led to internships and jobs. Students and graduates establish and rely on these personal and professional friendships and contacts to serve as sounding boards for work-related advice and to provide assistance in their searches for their next positions.