CIS student a standout nomination in local tech awards

Paige Zaleppa ’19 ’21 recognized for leadership at CLARK

By Cody Boteler on October 2, 2020

CLARK team
Paige Zaleppa, second from left, stands with other members of the CLARK team.

Towson University’s Paige Zaleppa ’19, ’21 stands among local technology innovators as the only student nominated for Technical Leader of the Year in the 2020 Technical.ly awards.

Zaleppa, who graduated in 2019 with a degree in information systems and is pursuing a master’s in computer science, is the product manager at TU’s Cybersecurity Labs and Resource Knowledgebase (CLARK), a platform created in 2017 with a grant from the National Security Agency to TU faculty Sidd Kaza maintained by TU students.

Her nomination describes Zaleppa as a “linchpin of an effort with a mission to ‘code responsibly,’” referencing an informal mantra in the Department of Computer & Information Sciences.

CLARK is a collection of free cybersecurity curriculum, on topics ranging from introduction to cybersecurity to quantum cryptography.

The tool took on a new importance earlier in 2020 with the rise of the novel coronavirus and an increased need for distancing learning across the country. The student team at CLARK launched Plan C, which is collecting and organizing content generated by faculty nationwide and getting it into the hands of educators as quickly as possible.

"Paige has been an excellent product manager and we hope to work with her while she completes her M.S. degree and beyond. The CLARK project at Towson has provided an educational opportunity for our students which has gone beyond what we ever imagined," says Kaza and Blair Taylor, TU faculty and project directors of CLARK.

Zaleppa is writing code as well as leading the team and ensuring programs and projects are completed. She says she was shocked to find herself nominated.

“This is my career goal: to be a product manager,” she says. “There are so many people up for that award that are just so deserving; they have amazing projects. It’s an honor just to be associated with those people.”

Online voting in the Technical.ly Baltimore Awards is open until Oct. 5.

This story is one of several related to President Kim Schatzel’s priorities for Towson University: TU Matters to Maryland and BTU-Partnerships at Work for Greater Baltimore.