Are you an autistic student in community college in the USA? Are you interested in exploring a career artificial intelligence (AI)? Apply to our free 2025 PAS4AI Workforce Remote Summer program!

In our course, you will be taught the fundamentals of AI, data science, and machine learning. Those who succesfully complete the course will be offered a remote summer internship at a professional organization.

Applications to the Summer 2024 program are closed. Applications for the Summer 2025 program will be due January 31, 2025.

Welcome to the Preparing Autistic Students for the AI Workforce NSF Project.

The USA faces a shortage of talent in the emerging technology field of artificial intelligence (AI). We can ameliorate the shortage by reaching out to untapped populations, such as autistic STEM community college students. Autistic people often demonstrate a strong affinity for STEM; however, they suffer from an 80% unemployment rate due to social stigma and discrimination.

The goal of our project is to address the employment gap by establishing innovative pathways for autistic students to specialize in AI careers. This proposal will develop innovative pedagogical materials and scalable tools to teach AI technical skills through a "learning-by-doing" experience, teach crucial team collaboration and communication skills through AI-focused project-based learning, and facilitate autistic community college students to obtain AI-focused summer internships and increase their access to AI careers. By providing internships for autistic students, this project will debunk the harmful stereotypes and change the exclusionary norms that impact their employment.

We use a strengths-based approach to provide strategies and supports that allow individuals with autism to engage confidently, competently, and with a positive sense of self when navigating the complex and challenging social environment of the workplace. Our pedagogical innovations include the human factors and user interface design to support AI subject-matter experts, mentors, and teachers learning to teach autistic students. Special education experts in autism who specialize in teaching communication, social, and teaming skills support our mentors in their day-to-day learning experiences. We employ online training to reach more autistic students and also make our online course materials available to community college teachers to offer this course at their own schools. Our program is scalable and self-sustaining through the training of mentors to support autistic people and have those mentors work with the interns in our program.