We Empower Educators
DARK Enterprises is a small non-profit with expertise and experience in cybersecurity education. We provide curriculum resources and services to educators as well as assessment/evaluation and analytics tools and services to educators and policy makers.
Our Mission
Our Values
- Make data-informed decisions.
- Pursue methodological rigor.
- Continuously learn and improve.
- Do good work.
- Communicate results effectively.
- Be responsible stewards of resources to invest in impactful efforts.
- Collaborate with others invested in the future of cybersecurity education.
- Be diligent and focused with our work, with our collaborators, with our resources.
- Be passionate advocates for preparing students for a future in cybersecurity.
We partner with leading educational organizations.
Melissa Dark
Melissa Dark has worked in cybersecurity education for the past 23 years. She has led several creative and impactful projects. Her early work in cybersecurity education focused on the graduate level and has progressively grown down to community college, and now high school, in response to two needs: robust cybersecurity literacy among all cybercitizens and closing the cybersecurity workforce gap. Melissa has expertise and experience in curriculum, assessment, evaluation, and research. She was a professor and associate dean for research and strategic planning at Purdue University. In 2015, she founded DARK Enterprises, Inc., a non-profit that focuses on a variety of projects in cybersecurity education: Design & Development, Assessment and Analytics, Research, and Knowledge Transfer. Jenny Daugherty
Jenny L. Daugherty, Ph.D. is the Research and Curriculum Lead for DARK Enterprises. Jenny has over 20 years of experience working in educational research, program evaluation, and curriculum/teacher professional development. Prior to joining DARK Enterprises, Inc., she spent over a decade in higher education, managing a high school curriculum project, leading teacher professional development workshops, and leading a STEM education center. At Purdue University she earned tenure as an Associate Professor and served as the Director of the Leadership Development Institute at Louisiana State University. Jenny has published 18 articles in peer-reviewed STEM education journals highlighting her research on teacher professional development. Jenny has also served as a program evaluator on several projects and was a member of the site visit team for the GenCyber program. She was a developer of the High School Cybersecurity Curriculum Guidelines, Teach Cyber, and the National Cybersecurity Teaching Academy.
Nancy Stevens
Nancy Stevens is a data specialist and curriculum creator for DARK Enterprises. She has written curriculum for Teach Cyber and the Catalyzing Computing and Cybersecurity in Community Colleges (C5) projects. Nancy has contributed to research and evaluation projects. She served on site visitation teams for the GenCyber program. Prior to joining DARK Enterprises, she taught AP Computer Science Principles, Python Programming, and Intro to Computer Science in North Carolina. She has led numerous workshops in Computer Science education. Nancy was inducted into the North Carolina Business Educator Hall of Fame in 2016, and was the honored recipient of the Dr. Orus Sutton Award in 2017. She has a BA in Business Management from the University of Northern Iowa, MA in Education from East Carolina University, and CompTIA Security+ certification.
Sabrina Smiley
Sabrina Smiley joined the Dark Enterprises Inc. team in 2017 as the copy editor/editor. Over time, that role evolved into a development manager. At Dark Enterprises Inc. and its subsidiary Teach Cyber, Sabrina assists with data integration, teacher professional development, curating cybersecurity content and engages with support agencies and partners. Before joining Dark Enterprises Inc., Sabrina was a special education teacher. Response to Instruction (RtI) is one of the primary connections between her work before coming to Dark Enterprises Inc. and her work at Dark Enterprises Inc. Sabrina earned both her undergraduate and master’s from Ball State University. When Sabrina is not keeping busy with cybersecurity education initiatives, you can find her spending time with her family, walking her mini golden doodle, Maple, or volunteering at her church.
What Teachers Say
Dennis Depew, PhD
Dr. Depew is a senior member of the American Society for Quality, ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education), and Epsilon Pi Tau Honorary Society. He is also an active member of AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). He is a board member of the Angel Roundtable (ART) and Dark Enterprise.
Vera Zdravkovich, PhD
Lipsum
Nate Evans, PhD
Nate Evans, PhD CISSP, is a nationally recognized expert in cybersecurity research. He currently works for Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Senior R&D Researcher. Nate has managed cybersecurity and cyberdefense activities in both the public sector and private-sector companies. He was involved in the development of multiple patented, R&D 100 award-winning technologies. He has a strong passion for cyber workforce development starting many student competitions including Iowa State’s Cyber Defense Competition and DOE’s CyberForce Competition(TM).
