Interview by Kelsey Kendall
David Hopkins ’25 started his educational journey at Tidewater Community College before coming to Old ֱ University to study cybersecurity.
After his first year at the University, he was awarded the National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps Scholarship for Service, which covered his tuition through his bachelor’s degree. He graduated last spring — on his birthday — and has started work on his master's through the School of Cybersecurity.
Old ֱ University’s news team asked Hopkins about his summer internship with the University’s . As part of the “Monarchs in the Field” series, which highlights student-interns making an impact outside of the classroom, Hopkins explains how this opportunity helped prepare him for future academic and professional goals.
Some responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Can you tell us about your current internship?
I'm conducting research on a cybersecurity-themed escape room and using that for security awareness training — as opposed to your typical security awareness training where somebody just comes in and gives a lecture. That can be a little boring if that is the only method used to teach the concepts and then people forget after a few weeks what they learned, so this is supposed to be a more innovative and engaging way to teach people about cyber hygiene practices.
What does a cybersecurity escape room look like? Can you give any examples of what a task might be?
Within an escape room, each challenge is supposed to go into another challenge. You might have a crossword puzzle and that will have different words on it, and those words will be a hint for the next challenge. Another challenge we were looking at was creating a needle-in-the-haystack type of thing where you have a list of different emails and you have to figure out which was the phishing email and what was the red flag within that email that made you say, ‘Oh yeah, this wasn't secure, and this is why it generated a security alert.’
What kind of impact do you feel you are making in this role?
One of the impacts that I really do feel like I'm making is being able to do something that won't only be beneficial for cybersecurity people, but something that could benefit others. It’s something that could benefit high schoolers or something that could benefit people who forget the basics of cybersecurity, like how easy it is to fall for a phishing scam because they're getting a lot more sophisticated and easier to manipulate.
How has getting hands-on experience outside of the classroom helped you?
This is actually my third internship. Here, there’s a lot more emphasis on research, and that was a lot of fun. Knowing I want to do a Ph.D., that’s going to be a huge part of being able to say I have experience in doing research, and I know the fundamentals of it and earn different accreditations, experiences and publications.
I’m trying to be well-rounded so If I want to work in industry, I can work in industry. If I want to work in academia, I can work in academia — or in the government field.
Can you tell us a little more about your experience at ODU studying cybersecurity?
One of the things that I would definitely say is don't be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. One of the huge factors of cybersecurity is that it's interdisciplinary — to the point where I'm somebody who has a theater background, and I'm still able to tie in things that I learned while in theater and doing things like digital photography and editing.
For instance, when it comes to theater, I'm doing things like public speaking. If I want to relate something that's very technical to an audience that doesn't have that type of expertise, I can learn how to use different terms that they'll be able to process it and they'll be able to understand that.