There is a close-knit, family feel at HBU.

This program will bring significant benefits to our community, the region and the industry as a whole. There is an increasing demand for cyber security professionals today, and there will undoubtedly continue to be in the future. The challenge of cyber security is a high priority, and the need for well-trained and ethical cyber security experts at all levels is becoming mission critical for every organization. I am honored to be part of this initial effort to bring this program to our students and community. The timing could not be better.

Honoring Christ above all, providing practical tips and strategies to more effectively minister to others is the heart of the American Association of Christian Counselors.  I am thankful for their ministry!

I never cease to be amazed that God’s desire is to use people —like you and me— to carry His message of hope in Christ to a searching and hurting world. if there is ever a time for Godly leadership, servanthood, and biblical counsel, it is now!

The professors want you to succeed academically; they do everything they can to help you out.

AACC will enable both trained and untrained people-helpers to become better Bible-based encouragers who can effectively minister to the many souls of our culture.

I feel like they hold you to a higher standard at HBU. People who know about HBU respect it.

We need educators to train the next generation in the helping sciences.

My time at HBU was a huge growth opportunity for me. I was really challenged. It was a season when I realized that this isn’t my parents’ faith or my church’s faith; it is mine.

From the time I placed my first phone call, I have had no issues with HBU as far as registration, payment and course scheduling. All I had to do was focus on the schoolwork. The online program doesn’t place any limits on you. HBU gives you all the tools and everything you need to succeed. All of my professors have been wonderful. Houston Baptist is like family, and the faith component there is important to me. I absolutely cannot say enough wonderful things about HBU.

Houston Baptist University has wonderful professors. They care for their students. You are an online student, but you feel like you’re in the class with the teacher. There is great communication and great feedback.

I could’ve studied ancient languages somewhere else, but wanted to come to a university that taught and studied it from a biblical worldview, because I want to teach from that view in the future as well.

The AACC serves and protects families with exceptional support and resources. Their expertise on counseling issues is consistently undergirded with spiritual truth.

There’s so much potential for veteran care in the Christian context. That’s why I chose HBU Online to navigate those waters. The people of HBU have their ears to the ground and are being trailblazers.

I commend HBU for the stand-up of the College of Engineering, and especially the Cyber Engineering program. The world right now is experiencing a technical revolution; automation and integration exposes industry to new threats and vulnerabilities, especially in the petro-chemical industry and our nation’s maritime transportation system. I have no doubt that with your guidance, student cyber engineers will acquire the skill sets and the desires to move forward and defend our industries from cyber attacks.

It takes some stress away knowing it’s not only all about math, science, English and history, but I also get to take classes to learn more about what I love. I love Jesus.

Based on my academic and industry experience in the area of Telecommunications, and Oil and Gas, I had the opportunity to go through the different degree programs, and tried to evaluate each program from three different perspectives: 1: market need, 2: academic plan and curriculum, and 3: technical-environmental conditions in Houston. In my opinion, the suggested curriculum for each degree program will provide students with a total learning experience, equip the students with the knowledge and tools to help them be successful in their future jobs, and help them overcome the technical challenges of the future. I do believe that the designed curriculum will provide the educational goals and objectives, and the same will produce good professionals with knowledge and experience to establish themselves as leaders in the needed technical areas for Houston and elsewhere.

The future graduates will help solve the deficit of professionals in the area of Cyber Engineering.

As a consumer of cyber resources, I will tell you that it is difficult to find and retain seasoned talent as the market is very competitive. I am excited about the opportunity to partner with Houston Baptist University in the development of new talent in the cyber security industry. Our plans are to support this endeavor with opportunities for internships, and eventually, employment offers as the program matures and graduates become available.

Both HBU and the AACC are committed to mental, emotional and spiritual health, and we believe that Christian education is one of the most powerful ways we can contribute to the growing mental health crisis in America.

I chose HBU mainly because of the personal relationships with the professors. I knew they cared about the students.

I wanted to go to school in a Christian environment and grow spiritually. I like that HBU has a good business program.

“It’s very exciting to be part of this very important program as it is being rolled out. From my perspective, we provide the cyber security, advanced analytics, machine learning, and other advanced services to keep up with the adversaries, not just for government entities but also for corporations. The importance of this for Houston is going to be as the city looks to bring in new companies, and to build current companies, access to a talent pool is important for our economy. As traditional technology spending may stay stagnant or the same, there is a big increase around the security side. More and more executives, boards of directors etc. have cadences around the capabilities of cyber security. It is a risk that more companies are acknowledging. More of the headlines we are reading in the newspapers today focus around the impact to global corporations from adversaries thousands of miles.

It’s very exciting to see this program being developed here in our hometown. I love the idea of having the advisory board. When you’re working through something like a cyber security program, you don’t have the advantage to have your students in isolation away from the real-life environment until they graduate. So having a program that engages real life corporations and partners throughout the program is something that will be such an advantageous system for the students as they graduate.”

Back in the late 1990s, we had two groups of people, the traditional IT people and the operational technology people who were responsible for field operations. Cybersecurity should be under one umbrella. Information and operational technology need to have the same vision. You cannot treat their security as silos.

The HBU College of Engineering program will deliver to its students the foundation needed to innovate and secure the future in science and technology.

I honestly owe a lot of my success to my time at Louisiana Tech’s engineering program that Dr. Napper founded there [Randle was a student of Dean Napper at Louisiana Tech]. A lot of it was not necessarily about the book smarts and the equations, but it was teaching me how to think about complex problems and how to break them down into their constituent pieces so that they can be solved in a repeatable way. What I am really looking forward to seeing at HBU is the same culture to be implemented.

I have a long career in cyber security and there is a huge skills gap and a huge employment gap, and anything Houston can do to help with that, especially with the oil and gas firms and the improving economy here in Texas and Houston, is well needed. So congratulations, and good for you guys for putting this together.