Offered as part of the First-Year Design program at the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, I codeveloped and teach course, "Introduction to Hacking Competitions", with curriculum revolving around beginner Linux skills, cybersecurity and hacking, and engineering process skills through hands on, highly structured, experiential learning activities. Alongside other courses offered as part of the First-Year Design program, courses are designed to be inclusive and welcoming to early-career first and second year university students, promoting experiential and peer-led learning that emulates the experience of capstone-level engineering courses.

A conference proceeding detailing our course methodology, pedagogy, and setup was presented at the 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition in Montreal, Quebec, and can be found here.

Acknowledgements: This work would not be possible without the contributions, dedication, and hard work of:

• Supervising Associate Teaching Professor Tela Favaloro

• Co-Student Instructor Iakov Taranenko