162 Students Came to NJIT in Newark for a Hands-On Day of AI and STEM Careers
Ninth- and tenth-graders from Passaic and Elizabeth spent Oct. 5 at NJIT building circuits, exploring binary code and hearing from professionals as HISPA marked 20 years of youth conferences.
One hundred sixty-two ninth- and tenth-grade students from the Passaic and Elizabeth school districts came to the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark on Oct. 5 for a youth conference on artificial intelligence and STEM careers, according to ROI-NJ's report on the event, published Oct. 26. All of the participating students came from low-income households, and 94 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, according to the report.
The conference, titled "Take ActIon: Lead the Next Wave!", was co-sponsored by NJIT and the Hispanic and Latinx Leadership Council and co-hosted by the Center for Hispanic Policy, Research, and Development, according to the report. Workshops included Verizon's Analog AI Prompt Engineering session, Exploring Binary Code from NJIT's Center for Pre-College Programs, and an AI career workshop involving NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing and the NSF-IES INVITE AI Institute.
The Newark conference was one of two HISPA youth conferences this month; on Oct. 14 the program moved to Rutgers University, where students explored engineering, chemistry, biotechnology and robotics, according to the report. HISPA, a nonprofit that mobilizes professionals as role models for students, is marking its 20th anniversary this year.
Over 20 years, HISPA says it has mobilized 3,500 role models to reach more than 32,000 students through classroom visits, corporate visits and 50 youth conferences on college campuses, according to the report — the Newark stop put that work on a campus in the middle of the city its students can reach.
