Academic Catalog

2024-2025

Bachelor of Science Interdisciplinary Studies with a Major in Cybercrime (BS)

Philip Mann, Program Coordinator and Faculty Advisor (pmann@odu.edu)

This major explores cybercrime from an interdisciplinary perspective that merges the disciplines of criminal justice, computer science, and information technology.  Students will receive a foundational understanding of crime and criminal justice and more in-depth understanding about cybersecurity, cyber law, and digital forensics.  In addition, students will receive a basic introduction to information technology. 

While many crimes have decreased over the past 25 years, the one group of crimes that has increased dramatically is cybercrimes. Careers responding to cybercrime have grown tremendously over the past decade.  While many of these careers require in-depth understanding about computer engineering and computer science, many careers also require a broader orientation grounded in the social sciences. Across the country there are 350,000 current vacancies in cybersecurity-related careers.  Roughly ten percent of those vacancies are in Virginia.

Cybersecurity experts across the world agree that academic programming should be interdisciplinary in nature.  While many universities have difficulty developing interdisciplinary majors, the IDS degree at ODU provides a national model that can be used to develop a cybercrime major grounded in the social sciences. ODU's current cybersecurity and cyber operations majors fill the employment gap for technologically-driven careers.  The cybercrime major will fill the employment gap in the area of policy- and legal-driven careers.