CEPE 2019 Host Institution:
Old Dominion University was initially founded in 1930 as a Norfolk extension of the College of William and Mary, itself established in 1693, prior to the existence of the United States. Old Dominion became an independent college in 1962 and took its name as a reference to Virginia’s nickname, “the old dominion,” which refers this area being the first property of the English crown on the North American continent.

Old Dominion University is a public university of the Commonwealth of Virginia, designated a Research University (high research activity) by the Carnegie Foundation. The university consists of six colleges: Arts and Letters, Business and Public Administration, Education, Engineering and Technology, Health Sciences, and Sciences. ODU was a pioneer in distance education and is a leader in education of active-duty military service members, veterans, and military spouses. Our enrollment is approximately 25,000, with an approximate 80% undergraduate and 20% graduate split. We have about a thousand international students from 108 countries.

In recent years, ODU has invested significantly in cybersecurity, developing a new interdisciplinary cybersecurity center and a new interdisciplinary cybersecurity major, bringing together faculty and courses from departments across four colleges of the university, including Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Modeling and Simulation, Information Technology, Psychology, Criminal Justice, and Philosophy. The inclusion of social sciences and humanities courses and faculty make our program and center unusual; perhaps unique. Other programs at ODU relate to Internet Studies, with well-established new media tracks in our Master’s program in Humanities and our Ph.D programs in English and Communication. In the Philosophy Department we have several faculty working on technology-related issues, making ODU one of the centers of Philosophy of Technology in the United States, where philosophers of technology are often isolated. Dr. D.E. Wittkower works on postphenomenology of digital interactions, Dr. Yvette Pearson does work on caregiver robots, Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald focuses on critical examinations of medical technologies of imaging and treating post-traumatic stress, Dr. Teresa Kouri Kissel will be developing and teaching a course in Cybersecurity Ethics as part of the interdisciplinary Cybersecurity major, and Dr. Andrew Kissel teaches a course on Philosophy of Video Games.