Access to enriching science programs is not equitable, with students from affluent districts having more opportunities to develop their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills than students from underserved districts. The Building Unique Inventions to Launch Discovery, Engagement, and Reasoning in STEM (BUILDERS) program was started in 2017 with support from the National Science Foundation’s ITEST program to provide students from the Alabama Black Belt with STEM opportunities to which they would otherwise have no access.This project-based learning (PBL) program uses the

Data gathered from 325 middle school students in four U.S. states indicate that both male (p < .0005, RSQ = .33) and female (p < .0005, RSQ = .36) career aspirations for being a scientist are predictable based on knowledge of dispositions toward mathematics, science and engineering, plus self-reported creative tendencies. For males, strong predictors are creative tendencies (beta = .348) and dispositions toward science (beta = .326), while dispositions toward mathematics is a weaker (beta = .137) but still a significant (p < .05) predictor. For females, significant (p < .05) predictors ordered