Marrci Conner is a seasoned cybersecurity educator and IT professional who brings more than two decades of industry experience and 17 years of college-level teaching to her work at Henry Ford College.
With expertise spanning cybersecurity, networking, programming, and digital forensics, she offers students a rare mix of technical knowledge, business insight, and real-world perspective that helps prepare them for both the classroom and the workforce.
Summary of the episode
Conner explains how Henry Ford College builds strong cybersecurity talent through hands-on labs, certification-aligned coursework, industry mentorship, and clear transfer pathways into four-year degree programs.
She emphasizes that student success comes from being a “triple threat” with a degree, certifications, and practical experience, while also highlighting the value of career exploration, professional networking, and learning how to align technical skills with real business needs.
Listen to the episode
Read a full transcript of the episode
Steve Bowcut:
Hello and welcome to the Cybersecurity Guide Podcast, the show where we help students and early career professionals make smart decisions about education and careers in cybersecurity.
I’m your host, Steve Bowcut. Today, our guest is Marrci Conner. Marrci is a full-time instructor at Henry Ford College with 20+ years of experience as an IT professional specializing in cybersecurity and 17 years teaching at the college level.
Marrci teaches across a range of subjects, including digital forensics, computer programming, networking, and cybersecurity, and she brings a powerful blend of technical depth and real-world perspective into the classroom.
Her academic background includes a bachelor’s in business information systems from the University of Detroit Mercy and an MBA with a focus in information assurance from Walsh College. She also holds the CISSP and CompTIA Network+ certifications. With that, welcome, Marrci. Welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.
Marrci Conner:
Thank you, Steven, and it’s a pleasure to be here.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay, this is going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it. So I have some questions that I’ve prepared, and when I do this, the first thing that I like to ask is to learn a little bit more about you.
I think it’s important for our audience to understand how you got to where you are at so they can start to mentally chart their own path and see different options of how people have progressed in their academic and professional careers.
So you’ve got a pretty impressive background with both an IT professional and teaching. So I think it would be interesting to learn what were some of the key moments, or maybe it wasn’t moments, maybe it was people, mentors that helped you to move from industry into the classroom or into academia.
Marrci Conner:
Yeah, so I never planned to teach college. I always thought I would just be an IT or cyber professional. And I was working at Ford Motor Company for most of my career. And in I think the late ’90s, I ended up taking the buyout and I moved to Illinois and I worked at State Farm Insurance Company, which I loved. I could walk to work.
Well, I got proposed to and I ended up relocating back to Michigan. And so while I was looking for a job, one of my dear friends said, our local community college needs computer science teachers. She’s like, “You should go apply.” And I was like, “But I’ve never taught.” And she said, “Every time you do a presentation for your boss or you’re teaching-
Steve Bowcut:
Exactly.
Marrci Conner:
You’re right.” And I’ve done a lot of presentations. So I went, I interviewed with the dean and she gave me four classes. Oh, nice. Yeah. So I was like, okay. Now, thank goodness they were introduction to computer classes, not too technical yet.
And so I was probably more nervous that the students were going to know that I was a new teacher than I was presenting to them. So what I ended up doing was I would teach in the evenings and on the weekends, and I worked for another insurance company in Michigan.
And one day I’m kind of perusing through, I think I got a feed or something, and Henry Ford College had a full-time position. I’m like, I’m just going to apply, see what happened. So I apply and they interview me. Well, actually it was the longest interview I’ve ever had in my life, Steven. I just want you to know.
Steve Bowcut:
Really?
Marrci Conner:
So if you can imagine, they give you a topic that you have to teach to your hiring committee. It was, explain the encryption algorithm of the Windows server operating system.
Steve Bowcut:
I wouldn’t want to try and do that.
Marrci Conner:
So I had to go buy a $60 book and create a PowerPoint presentation for an audience that I knew would be teachers and HR people. So I did, I presented, and the HR lady said, “I actually understood what you were talking about.
Steve Bowcut:
Nice.
Marrci Conner:
I was like, okay, awesome. And so they hired me. That’s all I can tell you. They said that they liked the fact the way I answered the questions and they asked me a question. It was something about if a student doesn’t understand the concept that you’re trying to teach them, what would you do? And I basically said I would pivot.
So if you explain it one way and they don’t get it, then you try and think of something in the real world that they could identify with. And so I’m like, I would just try and explain it another way, or I’d ask the student explain who did understand. And so it was that question.
And the other question was, I used to always feed my students because I- Oh, really? In the evenings, think about it. I worked all day. I’m going to a six o’clock class, so I’m hungry too.
So I would pick up pizza or subs or something on the way in. And so we would eat before class. So they liked the fact that I would feed my students. So that’s why they hire
Steve Bowcut:
Me. I suspect that you are everybody’s favorite instructor.
Marrci Conner:
Absolutely. And I still feed my students to this day, at least some candy or something. Okay. So that was one. And the other part that I wrote down was I think that having industry experience allows professors to have lots of stories about things that have gone wrong.
Steve Bowcut:
Perfect.
Marrci Conner:
Right. Because everything is not the happy path when you’re working in corporate America. The other thing that I think that me being an industry professional allowed me to ask my friends to be mentors and guest speakers and allow my students to shadow them. And I don’t know, some of my friends now teach too, so it just depends.
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah. So I’m really interested in this idea that because you’ve got experience, in fact, you’ve got degrees both in business and information assurance or security. So does that change or affect how you teach?
I mean, because you can see it from both perspectives. You can see what the business needs and you can see what the cybersecurity professional needs. And so do you integrate those two in your teaching?
Marrci Conner:
I do. And one of the things that I love about teaching at the community college is we assume that you don’t know anything and we’re going to start you at the bottom and build you up. And so since I’m starting at the beginning, I’m teaching you technical skills, which you’ll need, but you also have to keep in mind that you can’t bring vulnerabilities to the business.
You can’t harm the business. And so you always have to do that balancing act of balancing expenses, generating revenue, and not adding risks. And also IT cost businesses money, we don’t generate revenue, so I always understood that.
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah. And that’s so important for students to understand that. Sure, we can’t give you all the money you need to buy all the nice security tools you want because we’re running a business here. It has to make business sense, right?
Marrci Conner:
Yes. And I understood that. And also, one of my parents owned a business, so I just kind of naturally understood. And so you got to be creative. Everything shouldn’t cost a million dollars.
Steve Bowcut:
Exactly. Yeah. We kind of sometimes have to do with what we’ve got, right?
Marrci Conner:
Yeah, you got to be creative.
Steve Bowcut:
Now, another thing that from the little bio that I read at the top of the show that stood out to me, and I was very impressed with this, your professional certification. So I’d like to get you to talk about that a little bit. Do you see professional certifications as something that’s really important for students to get? Do they need to get some and along with a degree or instead of a degree? Or how do you see it all fits together?
Marrci Conner:
I like to think of it. I tell my students they should be a triple threat.
Steve Bowcut:
There we go.
Marrci Conner:
So you know where I’m going with this. So have a degree, have the cert and have some real world experience, do some outside projects or volunteers. So when you go to an interview or you have something special to talk about yourself. So it just so happens that my certification mapped to my master’s degree.
So every class I took in grad school was a domain of cybersecurity. So it was a natural transition for me to get my CISSP. But for students, and this kind of goes into one of your other questions about courses, if you want to, we can pop into that one.
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah, you know what? And I think that would go well together because it’s important that … Well, I’ll let you answer the question because I really don’t know.
Do you teach maybe some of the entry-level professional certifications? Do you teach the material that’s going to help them pass the test? And if you do that, how do you also make sure that they get the real, not just the test, but they understand what they’re doing?
Marrci Conner:
So my colleagues and I made a conscientious decision to align certain classes with certain certifications and to teach over and beyond the certification and have hands-on labs.
So whether it’s Cisco, Linux, Linux, advanced Linux, certain classes are going to do that and we’re going to teach you … Yes, you can pass the cert, but we want you to be able to have skills to go into whatever job you’re going to go to.
So yes, certs are important. They signal that you’ve mastered a particular topic, but what we’ve been doing the last few years is giving the certification exam as the final exam of the class.
Steve Bowcut:
Oh, really? Okay.
Marrci Conner:
To the point that we even pay for our cybersecurity students to take the EC Council Certified Ethical Hacking Cert. So we pay the $400 for them to take the certification exam. And what we’re finding is in certain classes, because we don’t do it for all because that would be expensive, our pass rate is phenomenal.
I know for the Linux cert, we had 34 out of 37 students pass. One student opted out of, didn’t want to take it and two didn’t pass. And so I think that students taking those kind of certification exams builds confidence. And so it just kind of takes-
Steve Bowcut:
So often it’s necessary to get a job. I mean, it’s what the hiring manager has to check that box even
Marrci Conner:
Exactly. …
Steve Bowcut:
Whether
Marrci Conner:
It’s not. It takes some mystery off of it. When you can take it as a final exam and you can pass a cert, especially if it’s something that you like, it just takes the mystery off and it builds confidence.
And I encourage my students to take certs for topics or careers that you’re interested in. So if you want to be a pen tester, then take the CEH, make an honest effort to try and pass that certification because that’s your career.
Steve Bowcut:
Right. Yeah. Oh, for sure. So you mentioned hands-on experience, and Shannon, I want you to talk about that a little bit more. Maybe you could walk us through what this realistic lab experience looks like, a day in the life of someone that is in one of your programs.
Marrci Conner:
Okay. So if you take an operating system class, we have specialized classrooms, and I wish I could show you pictures of them because they’re been customized by our faculty, and so they got to design what they wanted their classrooms to look like.
So we have these customized course or labs for Windows operating system, Linux operating system, Cisco Academy. And for cyber students in particular, we play Capture the Flag. So we do National Cyber League. It is a requirement of their course. And so right now we just did open source last week.
I believe we’re doing cryptography now. And so we do have a lab component to just about all of our classes. It may be in a virtual environment depending on the class, but for all the other classes, you have to come on campus and you have to touch equipment.
Steve Bowcut:
Okay. And that was kind of a question that I thought of while you were talking there. So does that mean that all of your programs require at least some in-person on-campus participation and I assume some of them may be virtual? Or are there some classes you can take without coming on campus?
Marrci Conner:
There are, but our degrees are not 100% online
Steve Bowcut:
Because it’s so difficult to give that hands-on.
Marrci Conner:
And we want you to be able to say, you touch the route, you touch the switch. Yeah. We want you to be able to not just use packet tracer for everything.
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah, exactly. Okay. And then maybe we covered this already. I wanted to make sure that I understood or the audience understands how you design the courses so that students aren’t just studying for the test, but we’ve probably covered that adequately.
Is there anything else along those lines that you wanted to mention so that you’re teaching Security+, for example, and you’re going to help the students get ready to take that test for that professional certification, but they need to know more than that, and I’m sure that you agree with that. Absolutely. Do you design that into the course?
Marrci Conner:
Yeah, we do. And so we’re going to teach you technical skills because we have course objectives that we have to map to be, and I’m sorry, we’re kind of getting off topic because we’re a CAE and I know we’ll talk about that in a moment. Oh,
Steve Bowcut:
I know. I wanted to go there. I kind og jumped over that, so we’re going to come right back to that, but you go ahead.
Marrci Conner:
Okay. But also wanted to mention that we also work with our career services department, and so they’re the people who do the resumes and the interviews and things like that. So that’s one way.
The other thing we have is an advisory committee, which is IT and cyber professionals who review our courses, what we’re doing, and they tell us what we should be teaching our students so that they’re career ready.
Steve Bowcut:
Excellent. See, that’s perfect. I love to hear that. So the industry, the people that are potentially going to hire these students are saying, this is what I need them to know when they show up to work or when they apply for a job at my organization, this is what I need them to know. That’s perfect.
Marrci Conner:
And so I was just thinking there’s one more other thing. It’s always another pillar. So since our students articulate to other four-year institutions and we want their classes to transfer, there’s certain things you have to cover so that that class will transfer. Yeah.
Steve Bowcut:
And I understand that you’re doing a two plus two model, and I want to talk about that. But before we get there, I do want to circle back and talk a little bit about the CAE. So you’re from NSA and DHS designated National Center for Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense, which is kind of a big deal in academia.
So what does that mean? How does that translate to the student? What does it mean for the student?
Marrci Conner:
So what it means for the student is an organization has come in and looked at everything about our degree, everything about our college, and they give us this criteria that we have to maintain. So yes, they come in, we get an audit every five years, but I also have a annual audit.
And so every year they basically say, “Have you did this checklist of things? And if you haven’t, why not? ” And if I don’t, I don’t keep the accreditation. And the accreditation allows Henry Ford college students to transfer to other CAE colleges and universities across the United States and they accept their courses.
So for instance, we articulate to Eastern Michigan University. Eastern is very gracious to us. They actually take 78 credit hours from us. So when my students get there, they’re a junior. You need 124 credit hours to get your bachelor’s degree.So they essentially do two more years and they have a bachelor’s degree.
Steve Bowcut:
This is that two plus two model that I mentioned briefly?
Marrci Conner:
Yes.
Steve Bowcut:
And do you only do it with Eastern Michigan University?
Marrci Conner:
No, no, no, no, no, no. We do it all.
Steve Bowcut:
Well, let’s start with, explain to the audience what a two plus two is. And I think you just articulated what it is.
Marrci Conner:
So you do two years at Henry Ford plus there’s something called MTA or Michigan Transfer Agreement courses. That’s like your statistics course, your calculus course. I guess they would be called gen eds at a four-year college.
So you take those plus your associate degree and you transfer those 78 credit hours to a four-year university that we have an articulation agreement with, which we have with Eastern Michigan, Western governors, trying to think URD Mercy, some of our students go to Walsh, so other CAE schools essentially.
So having that accreditation in that school, four-year school having an accreditation allows us to easily transfer students from our college to a four-year university.
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah. And for anybody in the audience who is just beginning their academic career and looking at this, that is fairly unique and it’s very helpful as I understand how it works is that you’re not going to lose any credits, which is a little bit unique.
And oftentimes when you get an associate’s degree and then you decide, well, I want to get a bachelor’s degree, what you find is, oh, I took a bunch of classes for my associate’s degree that I didn’t need could have been more efficient in my time and money that I spent if these things all transferred and helped me get my bachelor’s degree.
Marrci Conner:
One of the things, and I’m kind of going into, that we have in Michigan, it’s called Detroit Promise. And basically if you graduate from a Detroit public school, we pay for your community college degree. So that’s going to save you a lot of money. So you get your associate’s degree-
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah, half your bachelor’s degree is paid for then, essentially, right?
Marrci Conner:
Exactly. Okay. And so we do just about everything that you can imagine. I’m going to list them for you so that we’re making sure we’re meeting students where they’re at. So there’s Detroit Promise.
We also assign each student an academic advisor. And what your academic advisor is going to do is help you plan out your future so that you’re not wasting time or your parents’ money, and they can assist you through your kind of career exploration.
And if a student is not exactly sure if they want to do software engineering, network, or cyber, then they’ll send them to me, and then I’ll do some career exploration with them so that they’re selecting the right degree.
So we do that. We also do dual enrollment with high school students. So they can take college courses that is paid for through the district while they’re getting their high school diploma.
We have something called Early College. Early College is a five-year program where you’re getting your high school diploma and your associate degree in five years, and they’re actually on our campus. They have their own building.
Steve Bowcut:
That’s amazing.
Marrci Conner:
Then we have something called the Middle Trade College. And this is also high school students taking college courses. They’re getting a certificate, which is about 27 credit hours while they’re getting their high school diploma.
And so they come to us in their junior year, so they do half a day with us, half a day in high school, and they typically keep going and get their associate degree, or they go to a four-year college, but they start college with 27 credit hours.
And then we have regular college. We have our regular traditional college students. So I like the idea that we’re getting students in high school and exposing them to college early. I mean, it just accelerates the process because these kids are phenomenal. They’re super smart these days. Yeah,
Steve Bowcut:
That is very impressive. These students right from high school kind of hit the ground running in their academic career. By the time they get to your college, they’ve already got much of what they need to do under their belts, and then they can move on to a bachelor’s degree with that momentum that they’ve built. That is just awesome.
Marrci Conner:
And we even have a class or a workshop for them to help them transition from being a high school student to a college student like what’s expected because it is different. And I can’t treat you any different because you’re in college.
Steve Bowcut:
Exactly. Nobody’s going to call your mom and say you didn’t show up for class today. It’s on you to show up for class today when you move to college. So sometimes they need to be reminded of that.
Marrci Conner:
You need to turn your assignments in on time and they have to look professional and you have to use APA and MLA format just like a regular college student.
Steve Bowcut:
Yeah. Okay. So a couple more things that I want to hit on before I let you go. One of them is we talked briefly about some of the cybersecurity clubs and the hands-on stuff that you offer. So they’re going to learn some technical skills.
They’re going to touch some stuff. They will have had some experience. They’re going to learn some technical things. What else did they learn from that kind of education, that hands-on competitive sometime clubs and exercises?
Marrci Conner:
Wow, we have a lot of clubs at Henry Ford. I want to say we have 250. It’s a lot. Really?
Steve Bowcut:
Wow.
Marrci Conner:
We do. But we have a women in cybersecurity club and we have just a cybersecurity club, but they both have different focuses. So our cybersecurity club is more active. And I love the fact that, as a matter of fact, they’re having a meeting this week. And so they fellowship, if that is probably the right word.
I’ll give you an example. So we’re in class, and a lot of times we have club meeting at the end of class, and one of my students had an internship with the City of Dearborn, and they liked him so much. They asked if he had a classmate or a friend in his degree who could come work for them.
By the end of the semester, Steven, I had four students working. I was like, wow, they’re recruiting all my students. So I think the beauty of being in the cybersecurity club is, yeah, you get to do some cool stuff.
And this week, they’re going to check to see if your email is being used on rogue websites.
So you’re learning that kind of stuff. You’re making friends. These people are going to be your coworkers in the field. I mean, that’s just the reality. So they tell each other about different things they’re doing.
One thing they told me about, I got to investigate, there’s a site called Jobright, and it’s AI helping you find internships, and that’s what they’re using it from. And they learned about this at club meeting.
So the information sharing that happens from being with your peers is phenomenal. That’s one. The second thing I love about it is these are student ran clubs. I’m just their faculty advisor. They get their own guest speakers. They come up with their own events, everything.
So I wanted to tell you about one other thing that I’m doing this semester. So I partnered with our local utility company. It’s called DTE Energy and this other global company called Infosys, and they’re mentoring 21 of my students.
And this is our second year doing this. So last year when I did it, it was just cybersecurity students, but this year it’s called Electric Mind. So if you want to check it out on our website, Google Electric Minds or me, it’ll show up from last year.
So they mentor my students for six weeks. We do a presentation where we have IT and cyber professionals come in and tell us about a day in the life of what their job does. And then my students are paired with their mentors and they’re in groups.
And at the end of the six weeks, they’re going to do a presentation in front of all of us at the DTE headquarters, and they’re actually going to be critiqued by this panel of judges, and then they get feedback.
And so they’re going to basically give them a scenario and they have to come up with solutions. And I already can tell you whatever they come up with is going to have something to do with artificial intelligence. I already know that.
Steve Bowcut:
Oh yeah, I’m sure.
Marrci Conner:
So just love that I’m able to do this. It was such a huge success and we had such a great experience. We’re doing it again, and we’re hoping that this is something that we’ll keep doing each year.
Steve Bowcut:
Absolutely. That’s so invaluable. They not only learn the technical skills, as you pointed out, they also learn how to do a business presentation in front of a board or another group, which is something that they’ll have to do in real life.
And at the very least, they’re learning that cybersecurity is a team sport, if you will. You’re not wearing your hoodie in front of a screen all day, every day. That’s not what cybersecurity is. That’s just the meme. You have to work with your coworkers or your team members. There’s a lot that goes into that. So
Marrci Conner:
That’s so cool. Yeah, and I like the fact that they get to see who they will be in the future. I think that’s important that you see the future you. And the other cool thing is they get to keep communicating with these mentors even after the program’s
Steve Bowcut:
Over. Yeah, they’ll build relationships that will last throughout their career.
Marrci Conner:
Absolutely. And they’re mentoring you and giving you advice and helping you navigate your goals because they have to come up with goals that they would like to reach, and they’re going to help them do that.
Steve Bowcut:
And in 10 years, they will be the mentors helping somebody else. That’s the way it should be working.
Marrci Conner:
Absolutely.
Steve Bowcut:
That’s perfect. All right. So we’re about out of time. There’s one question here I want to end up. They always try and end in something that’s got maybe some actionable advice built into it.
So you mentioned earlier that during particularly these high school students, they’ll at some point come to you or the people that are just starting college as well, and you’re going to help them decide which path they want to take.
So I think it would be interesting to kind of, how do you do that? I mean, if they say Oh, I want to be an ethical hacker, but not everybody is cut out for that. So you have to somehow help them understand what ethical hacking is all about.
So how do you do that? And then maybe some actionable steps. What would you advise somebody who’s interested in cybersecurity? They have the ability to go to Henry Ford?
What steps should they be taking?
Marrci Conner:
So one of the things I like to ask students is do they like the intro to programming class or do they like the intro to networking class?
Steve Bowcut:
Oh, there you go. Let’s figure out where they’re at. Where their heads at, what do they like?
Marrci Conner:
Okay. So if you told me you like networking, then I kind of know you might be okay for the cyber. If you told me that you enjoyed the programming class, I might say you might want to check out software engineering.
Very good. Okay. But I’ll also explain that you do have to know a little programming because you got to be able to write scripts. So that’s one. Second thing I’m going to do is I’m going to take you to cyberseek.org website, and I’m going to ask you to look through the website and tell me three job titles that you find interesting.
And then I have this really in- depth homework assignment where you go to the NIST framework and you can see in more detail what that job, what’s your day in, day-out task. And then we can figure out what search you should focus on, if you’re going to go to a four-year college, which colleges specialize in what.
So what I’m finding is my students who NCL usually tells me who’s going to be a pen tester and who’s not. Really? Honest and truly. And what I love about playing Capture the Flag is I have had several students who thought they wanted to do cyber and pen testing only to find out that they really didn’t enjoy playing Capture the Flag.
And so we find … Well, the young lady I’m thinking of, she actually is going to focus on automotive cybersecurity, but she’s going to be a programmer because with the cyber background, so she’ll make sure that they’re writing secure code.
So there are different ways and different things and assignments that we do career exploration in each class to just make sure that we’re putting you in the right path. Because a lot of times students don’t realize that there are 10 domains in cybersecurity and you’ll know all 10 at a high level, but you just need to focus on one.
Steve Bowcut:
All right, exactly. Very good. Okay. So we are out of time, but thank you so much, Marrci. This has been incredibly helpful and it’s been a lot of fun. So thank you for walking us through the opportunities at Henry Ford College and for sharing practical guidance for students or anybody that’s trying to find their path into cybersecurity. We really appreciate it.
Marrci Conner:
Well, it has been my pleasure, Steven. Thank you for reaching out and asking me to participate.
Steve Bowcut:
Well, it was a lot of fun. And to our listeners, if you’re exploring cybersecurity programs, especially options that combined hands-on learning with clear career and transfer pathways, you really owe it to yourself to look at Henry Ford College and take a good close look at that.
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and consider sharing it with someone else who’s thinking about a cybersecurity degree. And with that, I’m your host, Steven Bopet, and we’ll see you in the next episode.