Former Head Of Real-Life NCIS Now Teaching Students At Metro State

DENVER (CBS4) - The former director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has a new roll in Colorado as a teacher at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

"I'm going to try and make my classes very engaging and very interesting," Andrew Traver said.

Traver leaves behind a 33-year career in Federal Law Enforcement. He led the ATF field offices in Chicago then moved to Denver a few weeks before the Aurora theatre shooting. He then spent six years leading NCIS, even getting a cameo role in the popular TV show "NCIS Los Angeles."

"So they get the comradery right and they get the humor right but I was the director for nearly 6 years and we never shot anybody," he joked.

Now he wants to teach students at MSU Denver about the comradery. He'll teach two classes in the fall about Criminal Justice, but Wednesday night he was speaking to a class in the Cybersecurity program.

"Everything we touched at NCIS had a cyber dimension to it; every single thing," Traver said. "We were always trying to recruit cybersecurity people with those kinds of backgrounds and the toughest thing is to retain them."

Traver says he wanted to come back to Colorado to reunite with MSU Denver President Janine Davidson. The two worked together when Davidson was Undersecretary of the Navy and Traver was at NCIS.

"I want to be here, I want to be part of this. I want to be part of the mission of this university," Traver said.