UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Gerald Santoro, senior lecturer of information sciences and technology in the College of Information Science and Technology, is the recipient of the 2017 Undergraduate Program Leadership Award.
The award recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated exemplary leadership benefiting a Penn State undergraduate degree program. Specifically, it recognizes those individuals who have major responsibilities for the delivery of undergraduate education within a unit and who are providing leadership that has transformed or revitalized the undergraduate program in some way.
Santoro has been instrumental in helping to create and enhance the security risk and analysis (SRA) major, building on his experiences in the Office of Computer and Information Systems, where his team led anti-malware effort for the University before Security Operations and Services had been formed.
As a member of the Curriculum Design Committee, Santoro has shaped many classes for resident and online students including courses on risk assessment, mitigation and management and a senior-level course on cyber crime and warfare. Santoro also developed two of the six courses required for a new cyber security option for the SRA major.
Nationally, Santoro led the effort to have the SRA major recognized by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, resulting in Penn State’s designation as the Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber-Defense and Information Assurance until 2020.
Santoro’s website helping people protect their security online led to him being named one of the Top 30 Security Professors of 2013 by BackgroundChecks.org.
Santoro designed the college’s first massive open online course (MOOC), which focused on personal computer security. The course, available worldwide, introduces topics and provides reading materials and video-based lectures to help students better understand online security.