Khoury News

“Defend the castle”: Khoury faculty lead middle and high school cybersecurity camp in Portland

"Cyber is a growing field," says Khoury professor and GenCyber Camp director Scott Valcourt. "We need to provide opportunities for youth, particularly in Maine, to explore the concept and see it as a viable career option."

July 30, 2025

by Benjamin Hosking

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This past April, 32 middle and high schoolers gathered at the STEM Coliseum and Learning Center of Maine to defend the structure from a hypothetical attack. The students toured the building, assessing how they could “defend the castle” both physically and digitally. 

“Campers are each given this castle which they have to figure out how to defend on a whiteboard with moats, towers, weapons, gates, and only one entrance in,” says Scott Valcourt, a Khoury teaching professor at the Roux Institute in Portland, Maine. “Then we asked them to turn around and think like the adversary who will attack the castle. When you figure that out, you figure out an aspect of the castle that’s deficient.”

For the budding cybersecurity experts, it was not their first time defending a castle. They had spent a week together in July 2024 at the first GenCyber Camp in Maine, also held at the Roux Institute. GenCyber, a government-supported program sponsored by the National Security Agency, aims to inspire the next generation of cybersecurity professionals by providing experiences for students and teachers at the secondary school level.

“That principle of thinking like an adversary resonates throughout the week as one of the concepts one needs to think about when considering cybersecurity,” says Valcourt, who directed the camp. “Then translating that thinking to apply those principles to passwords, systems, websites, etc.”

Because the camp was free and residential, students from across Maine could attend, leveling the playing field by offering access to every student.

“Cyber is a growing field, and we need to provide opportunities for the youth, particularly in Maine, to explore the concept and to see it as a viable career option,” Valcourt says. “Middle school tends to be the time period when you’re looking at technology as a direction for a career; high school can be too late.”

“A program like this introduces students within the K-12 space to STEM. Our ultimate goal is to get them excited about the field and realize it can be for them,” adds Gary Cantrell, director of computing programs at the Roux.

Cantrell was the lead curriculum instructor for the camp. He collaborated with Lindsey Jamieson, a Khoury teaching professor and associate dean of teaching faculty who specializes in K-12 computer science education, to adapt the complexities of cybersecurity to an informative and fun experience for sixth through ninth graders. Each day, the camp instructors would introduce a cybersecurity concept, followed by a related game or exercise.

“I designed the course from the ground up, starting with how a computer works and then each day focusing on a different, relevant topic like cryptography, networking, or digital forensics,” Cantrell explains. “That’s what a cyber specialist is; you’re a jack of all trades and need to know how everything works.”

In between activities, there were field trips to the Portland Museum of Art and the Portland Observatory, both walking distance from the Roux Institute. The campers toured the L.L. Bean headquarters with one of their cybersecurity professionals to get a sense of how a large retailer handles cybersecurity. Guest lecturers from colleges and high schools across the state came to speak.

Two events brought the lessons together: a scavenger hunt on Peaks Island that involved geolocation and code breaking, and a big game of capture the flag that involved hidden messages and codes to open a box with a final prize.

Valcourt and Cantrell both expressed how refreshing and fulfilling it was to teach middle school students about cybersecurity.

“It's always fun to see someone’s realization when they peek behind the curtain,” Cantrell says. “Every time you take a photo on your phone, it embeds the GPS data of where it was taken. That was a lot of fun, they saw behind the curtain.” The scavenger hunt functioned as an online safety lesson, showing students how easily they could be tracked.

“Coming out of the GenCyber camp, we learned a lot about running a camp for middle schoolers in their summer break season,” Valcourt adds. “Middle schoolers are a tough audience, and we’re thinking about how we might translate what we learned into programs on other concepts.”

Those future efforts just might get even more ambitious. After the students spent the latter half of their day at the STEM Coliseum learning about drone flight and the real-world cybersecurity issues it poses, Valcourt saw the potential for a Maine-based team for drone soccer, a competitive sport integrating computing, aerospace, and teamwork skills for K-12 students.

Cantrell was especially glad to see that even after many months and the big change of starting high school, the campers had retained key lessons from the previous summer.

“The number one lesson I try to get across is not technical at all, it’s about balance,” he explains. “Computer security is about balance. The more secure you make something, the less accessible and usable it is. They retained that. As an instructor, that’s your biggest hope, that they retain the big lessons.”