Guest feature: Betsy Stein is a communications officer for NSA. Follow NSA on Facebook and Twitter.

Specialized cyber classes, joint technology research labs, and career opportunities for students are just a few of the benefits of the National Security Agency's (NSA) investment in strong partnerships with colleges and universities.

NSA is celebrating these partnerships with a new Featured School Series campaign on NSA.gov that will highlight schools that help develop the talent and tools needed to meet national security challenges. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is the first to be featured.

"Our relationship with University of Maryland, Baltimore County spans more than 20 years and has contributed greatly to our national security mission," said George Barnes, Deputy Director of NSA.

The series' first installment highlights facts about NSA's partnership with UMBC - such as the 1,100 plus NSA employees with UMBC degrees. The Featured Schools page for UMBC also includes several profiles on those with interesting connections to both institutions - such as Darniet Jennings, whose groundbreaking work begun in college led to a patent once he came to NSA.

"UMBC's long-standing partnership with NSA has provided valuable experiences for our students, faculty, and alumni to pursue internships, careers, and collaborative research opportunities," said UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III. "Through this work we are helping to address the need for well-trained cyber professionals by creating a network of talented people to protect the state, nation, and world."

UMBC and NSA's partnership helps provide students the skills they need to be successful for the workforce of tomorrow in science, technology, engineering, math and cyber fields. Collaborations such as this also help to develop curriculum for rapidly-growing career fields such as cybersecurity and expand innovative research opportunities. UMBC has more than 14,000 square feet of NSA research space on campus.

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