A have completed my MSDF from UCF, and already possessed a Masters in Criminal Justice (Military TA covered it and my undergraduate work was not in the field, but that’s another conversation) and Graduate Certificates in Cybercrime and Public Policy. I am a gluten for punishment, I know.

All that aside, I think teaching in the field is pivotal for growing our collective ability and for furthering my own expertise; however, my ability to teach at the collegiate level, where I feel the most progress is needed, is limited by my lack of PhD (Talk about the biggest “check the block” endeavor!)

So, with that in mind, anyone have thoughts on specific fields of study, computer science versus cyber security, versus Informatics, etc? While the end state is really just being able to teach, I obviously would prefer a program that would have a positive impact on my profession, Digital Forensics in the Law Enforcement arena. I appreciate any feedback/thoughts!

*Edit 1 - I am on the Middle Georgia area, so local, part-time degrees in the local area or online programs are an unfortunate must.

**Edit 2 - This question was more a search for degrees, and less a request for professional guidance. That said, as many of the commenters seem to think, which is reasonable, school is all I know, I wanted to provide some background. I graduated with my Undergrad in 2011 and joined the US Army. After three years, I became involved in Federal Law Enforcement, and since that time have conducted investigations into contract fraud, murder, adult and child rape, child exploitation, drug trafficking, and probably anything else you can think of. As you can likely imagine, the need for digital forensic knowledge became key to my investigations as time went on, and while I was taught to do many things, such as logical and physical mobile device extractions, and figured out how to do others, such as brute force into servers to identify individuals downloading CSAM, I was never trained or educated in the practice. Thus the education push over the last few years. I have taught forensics at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, where I am a certified Senior Instructor, which sounds cooler than it is, and I have trained LE professionals at the local, state, and federal level in various venues outside of FLETC. My ambition to teach in the field was born out of my desire to pass on what I have learned, and what I have failed at, in order to give the next generation of practitioners a better foundation to take over.