ASU pre-veterinary students share pet stories, pet care tips in new series – ASU News Now

Are furry, feathery or scaly friends beloved members of your household or regulars in your daily social media feeds? Then you may not know it yet, but your next must-follow series has just been launched by Arizona State University’s College of Integrative Sciences and Arts.
The CISA Pet Ambassador Program was, ahem, unleashed Oct. 21, in advance of National Make A Dog’s Day (Oct. 22), a day reminding people to look to animal shelters for pet adoption. ASU College of Integrative Sciences and Arts student Mara McDonald and her rescue dog, Max, the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts' inaugural Pet Ambassador. McDonald, who lives in Washington, is an online major in applied biological sciences with a concentration in pre-veterinary medicine. Photo courtesy Mara McDonald Download Full Image
Each week, a new pet from the ASU community will be featured on the web and the college’s social media accounts. Spotlights will include pictures and stories submitted by pet guardians, with commentary from students who are completing the pre-veterinary medicine concentration in applied biological sciences.
RELATED: Meet Max, the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts’ first Pet Ambassador, and pre-vet major Mara McDonald
While the students won’t be giving out medical diagnoses and advice on treatment, they will be drawing upon their curriculum in pre-veterinary courses — like ABS 378: Applied Animal Nutrition and ABS 372: Captive Animal Behavior Management — to share general information on overall wellness and pet care.
“We’re really excited to share our students’ passion for animal well-being and bring visibility to our pre-veterinary medicine curriculum in applied biological sciences,” said College of Integrative Sciences and Arts Dean Joanna Grabski, who conceived the initiative early in the fall semester and who is pet guardian to Leo, an empathetic pup who came to the U.S. from Senegal in 2014.
More than 850 College of Integrative Sciences and Arts students are in the growing pre-veterinary program — with 250-plus studying at the ASU Polytechnic campus and about 600 completing the major online. The program teaching faculty includes licensed veterinarians.
“The pre-vet students have really come through with incredible photos and amazing stories about their pets,” said College of Integrative Sciences and Arts web content administrator and social media manager Theresa Cordon, pet mom to TJ, a Maltese/Shih Tzu mix who has an appetite for chicken nuggets. “The first round of submissions from students yielded dozens of great pet ambassadors.”
Lecturer in wildlife and animal science Julie Murphree sees the Pet Ambassador Program as an opportunity for pre-vet students to help create a community where animal-loving students can connect with other like-minded pet owners.  
The relationships, she said, have the potential to initiate the building and creation of innovative projects and the sharing of ideas that tie directly into the curriculum and the independent projects students are tackling.
“There are many misconceptions out there surrounding animal health and aging, for example, and the best diets for dogs and cats,” said Murphree, an avid running companion to her Aussie, Josie, and previous animal guardian to a menagerie of desert tortoises, dogs, cats and horses.
“There are issues the public wants to know more about and that many of our students choose to research more in-depth for their own end-of-semester projects and honors theses.
“Our students also can share what they’re learning about ways to strengthen the relationship and communication skills between companion animals and their guardians,” she said, “and an appreciation of force-free training and its application to everyday living and being out together in the wider community in settings such as cafes, off-leash areas, busy streets and beaches.”
Keep tabs on the CISA Pet Ambassador program on the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts website or the @CISAASU Instagram and Twitter accounts, and the hashtag #PetAmbassadorCISA.
Director, Creative Services, College of Integrative Sciences and Arts
602-496-1454 [email protected]
Connected devices are everywhere — from our phones and doorbell cameras to our cars and smart infrastructures — and the security of those devices is critical. Cybersecurity needs to be everyone’s responsibility; we must all work together to create a safer environment for this generation and those to come.Since 2004, the President of the United States declared October to be Cybersecurity Aw…
Connected devices are everywhere — from our phones and doorbell cameras to our cars and smart infrastructures — and the security of those devices is critical. Cybersecurity needs to be everyone’s responsibility; we must all work together to create a safer environment for this generation and those to come.
Since 2004, the President of the United States declared October to be Cybersecurity Awareness Month, led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Cybersecurity Alliance. This year’s theme — “See Yourself in Cyber” — demonstrates that while cybersecurity may seem like a complex subject, it’s really about the people.
In this Q&A, Arizona State University experts Nadya Bliss, executive director of the Global Security Initiative, and Jamie Winterton, director of strategy at the Global Security Initiative, discuss how cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility, how can you protect yourself online and what can we do about cybersecurity challenges.
Nadya Bliss: Computing and connected devices are literally in every aspect of our lives and we put so much trust in them to help us function as individuals and as a broader society – from helping us organize our day to tracking our exercise to managing the worldwide supply chain of critical goods. As a result, the security of those devices is paramount.
Jamie Winterton: So many of the building blocks of society are connected to the internet, so I think it really counts as critical infrastructure at this point.
Here is some practical advice from Bliss and Winterton.
Winterton: The first reason is the pay — cybersecurity professionals tend to be paid very well. There are so many ways to participate in cybersecurity, and I think that gets missed sometimes. There are needs in governance, compliance, in policy and in being a security evangelist to users and communicators. All of these are sorely needed today.
A second reason is the fact that careers in cybersecurity drive real-world impact. You are doing something which protects those who may not be able to protect themselves. When we create more secure technology, we are asking users to take on less burden, and also less risk.
Bliss: Thinking like a hacker does not necessarily require a technical background; there are great cybersecurity professionals who have backgrounds in history, philosophy and theater. Many studies show that there is a labor shortage in cybersecurity. As technology evolves and increasingly becomes prevalent, opportunities continue to rise. An employee on this desired career path is guaranteed a growth trajectory due to the many opportunities to learn different techniques, modalities and operations within cybersecurity.
Bliss: We have an overfocus on capability and an underfocus on security, which is often relegated to a secondary consideration. Also, the cost of vulnerabilities continues to rise — from the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack to the Equifax data breaches — and the shift we see now is that people realize the importance of security. We need a different set of incentive structures in order for things to improve at a steady rate, and the next step is implementation.
Winterton: In the infosecinformation security community, we hear about companies that create job postings that do not match the actual need. Yes, we need more people in the field, but we need to hire the right people, with the right experience, as well.
Learn more about how ASU is addressing the deficit of cybersecurity.
The following predictions from Winterton and Bliss look ahead over the next five to 10 years:
Bliss: We tend to be more excited by novelty than we are about security, and I think we need to pause and ask ourselves, “Do I need this household item to be connected to the internet?” Also, we need to connect the communities of those who build the systems and those who use them. We should ensure a better understanding of the vulnerability space at all education levels, from kindergarten all the way up.
Winterton: In the United States, we have an overlap between the public and private sectors, and the regulation and governance across those spaces will always be a grand challenge. There are unique issues when privately-owned companies that perform public good are breached or fall victim to ransomware, like Colonial Pipeline. The challenges increase when we look at the international level, and we do not as of yet have an international consortium to address cybersecurity issues. This is possibly the grandest challenge of all.
Winterton: We cannot fix cybersecurity issues without a radical interdisciplinary approach, and at ASU, we have the edge through the Center for Cybersecurity and Trusted Foundations. One of the focuses of the (center) is to give people hands-on experience in real-world situations.
ASU has a wide range of offerings in cybersecurity training and education that enable people to pursue different career paths in the field. In addition to formal degrees through the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence and other academic units, ASU is engaged in experiential learning – through efforts like supporting student hacking clubs and organizing Capture the Flag competitions, including in the past organizing the largest in the world at DEF CON.
Learn about ASU’s involvement in DEF CON.
The Global Security Initiative is partially supported by Arizona’s Technology and Research Initiative Fund. TRIF investment has enabled hands-on training for tens of thousands of students across Arizona’s universities, thousands of scientific discoveries and patented technologies, and hundreds of new startup companies. Publicly supported through voter approval, TRIF is an essential resource for growing Arizona’s economy and providing opportunities for Arizona residents to work, learn and thrive.
Top image: Jamie Winterton (left) and Nadya Bliss.
Manager of Marketing and Communications, Knowledge Enterprise , Global Security Initiative
480-727-4419 [email protected]
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