There have been great efforts to advance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines and address the need for diversity in the STEM field. It is critical for significant economic prosperity to increase the number of STEM programs for youth. Researchers have examined the STEM fields racial and gender disparities because it is equally essential to have STEM workers from all racial/ethnic backgrounds and genders to influence the STEM pipeline. Many U.S. schools work to integrate more STEM-based curriculum in efforts to make improvements in education and career exploration. This has included restructuring educational standards and creating specific STEM programs throughout various communities. Students rely on technology every day without training about the connected career opportunities. To better prepare students to fill roles in the STEM workforce, there is a need to help students understand the connection between their secondary math and science coursework and STEM occupations. Since there tends to be a gap between education and career exploration, this study uses the foundational principles of the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) to focus on behaviors and youth influences to explore the capacity of youth participants to influence their career exploration and perception towards STEM using the Mark Patrick Mahoney Attitudes and Perceptions towards STEM (APT) survey. The Black Youth participants will explore the engineering and technology within the STEM acronym and learn computer science’s specific career field, emphasizing Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, and app development using MIT App Inventor. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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