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[Bryson Payne, Ph.D., Computer Science & Information Systems] - I'm Dr. Bryson Payne. I teach computer science and cybersecurity, mostly on the Dahlonega Campus. The reason I first came to ǧÃŬAV was to finish my bachelor's degree. I had left and taken a job with a company after going to Georgia Tech for three years. I finished my bachelor's and immediately started my master's degree. Dr. Kathy Sisk, who was the department head of mathematics and computer science, offered me an opportunity to work as a graduate teaching assistant for the first time back in 1997 and 98, and I immediately fell in love with teaching college, I knew that that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my career, so I went to Georgia State and finished my Ph.D. while I worked here at ǧÃŬAV. And I became a tenure-track faculty member in 2005.

One of the greatest honors of my career here at ǧÃŬAV was pinning second lieutenant bars on now Captain Joseph Peterka. He was one of our first cyber students to get the Cy1, the Cyber One identifier. It's an Army skills identifier that sets them up for career and Signals and Cyber in the U.S. Army. Joseph invited me to his pinning ceremony, and I was one of the faculty that got to place his second lieutenant bars on him. It really meant a lot to be selected as the 2021 Alumni Distinguished Professor, first of all because I was nominated by my former students. It means a lot that alumni would take the time out of their busy schedules. A lot of them work for really cool companies all over the country and sometimes around the world. And to hear that they had received nominations for me for the Alumni Distinguished Professor Award, that probably meant the most. But it's just such a milestone.

One of the things I'm proudest of when it comes to my students is the fact that we beat not just Georgia Tech and all the other senior military colleges and the service academies, but we beat over 500 other universities in the NSA Codebreaker Challenge in 2019 and 2020 for back-to-back national championships. We have been in the top six for the past six years in a row. We just came in second place this past year to Georgia Tech. But I think the team's got another shot at it next year. I have two favorite parts to every semester. The first is that first week or two of school where we're getting to know the students' names and getting to know a little bit about their background. We typically have packed classes. We have 30 or 40 students in every section of C.S. and cyber classes, but I do my best to get to know the students' names and where they come from, what they're interested in in cybersecurity. There's so many different career paths that they can go for in the future.

My other favorite time of the semester is graduation. Getting to see the students walk the stage, getting to meet their families after the ceremony, take pictures with the students, it's a really rewarding step to see them move into their careers, to see how their journey brought them from freshmen who were just learning to program to really competitive cyber professionals who are able to go out and take jobs in military and industry and government. Students that have inspired me, wow, there are a lot of these. I'll tell you about a few. Our Cyberhawks team leadership, our presidents over the past several years, starting with Brad Regeski, Daniel Haugen, Houstoun Hall, Ben Huckaba, Paul Kim and now Sawyer Shepherd are just regular college students who are just really good at cyber and are willing to mentor and teach other students to be one of the best cyber teams in the country. We won those national championships because of our student leadership. They put hundreds of hours into those competitions every year. I'm really proud and I'm always energized and inspired by our Cyberhawk competition teams, but our Cyberhawks leadership is really special. So when I came to ǧÃŬAV a little over 27 years ago, I really just had a few people who believed in me, who invested in me. Dr. Kathy Sisk, Dr. Lennet Daigle, who was the dean over Arts and Letters back then.

We had just a few people in my undergraduate and then my master's program that gave me an opportunity to get more involved at ǧÃŬAV. I think that's the advice I would give to somebody coming in either as a new freshman or coming here as a transfer student or coming in as new faculty. Just get involved. There are so many opportunities to be a part of the ǧÃŬAV family, whether you want to sponsor a club or join a club, you've got unlimited leadership opportunities, unlimited service opportunities here at ǧÃŬAV. And that's what's kept me going for 27-plus years..

Viewbook 2024: Bryson Payne