By Mitchell Rukat

Another year has begun at Penn State University, and this year the Security and Risk Analysis Club will be creating and presenting a Community Outreach Project.  Here, representatives from the SRA club will give presentations at high schools on the topic of Social Networking, Security, and Privacy.  Many high school students know about MySpace and Facebook, but are unaware of the issues that are associated with these websites.  While this is a serious topic, we are designing a fun and interactive presentation with videos and humor.  This presentation will also be used in order to promote the IST and SRA majors.

Currently, three teams of four to five students are working on creating presentations that they believe will be informative and fun.  the SRA club plans on giving the first presentation sometime around Thanksgiving Break.  Caroline Furey, the president of SRA Club and also a member of one of the Community Outreach teams, plans on returning to her high school, Upper Darby High School in Drexel Hill, PA, once the presentation has been verified and approved by Dean Supon, Erica Garner, and Gerry Santoro.

Each presentation will probably feature 2 to 3 presenters, with each one responsible for presenting a different sub-topic.  The overall presentation will last around thirty minutes.  With two to three speakers at each event, students will be able to learn about the security issues that are associated with social networking websites from a variety of perspectives.  Hopefully, these presentations will help to educate high school students and increase the popularity of the SRA and IST majors.