The university’s Bridge to AI summer program introduces Oakland high school students to artificial intelligence, career readiness and college prep.
Thirty high school students participated in the Oakland Summer Youth Employment Program, where they worked on campus and received training in how to use AI. Courtesy photoOAKLAND, Calif. — After just a few days of training at Northeastern University’s Bridge to AI summer program, high school senior Sebastian Munez put his new skills to work on a question that’s top of mind.
“I asked, ‘Please help me find scholarships that fit my criteria,’” he says. “And it spit back all these websites. I didn’t know AI could do all of that. It was eye-opening for me.”
Munez is one of 30 high school students who participated in the Oakland Summer Youth Employment Program, operated through Northeastern’s Community to Community Impact Engine. Working for five weeks in various departments on campus, students got more than a paid summer job.
After working Monday through Wednesday, they spent Thursdays and Fridays in professional development and AI training. Workshops included résumé and college essay writing, interview prep and prompt engineering for AI tools. Students also explored the ethics and risks of artificial intelligence.
“I got to learn something new, especially with AI,” says Natalie Hernandez, who worked alongside Munez in Northeastern’s Partnerships division. “I didn’t know it could be useful for essays and stuff, but now I’m going to take advantage of that for my senior year.”
Launched on the Oakland campus in 2023, the program provides paid work experience, college prep and career skills — some taught by local professionals. Each week, an entrepreneur visited the group to share stories and advice from their own career journeys.
Among the most memorable were a real estate agent and a representative from an AI-powered commercial insurance brokerage.
“That’s what impacted me the most,” says Jasmine Licea Orozco, who worked with children at the campus Children’s School. “It opened my eyes to different career paths. Just hearing their stories has been a bit of an inspiration.”
Some guest speakers offered wisdom that went beyond career advice. One entrepreneur’s words stuck with Hernandez.
“He said that your mind is the only thing that’s limiting your success,” she says. “That really hit me because I feel like anything is possible if you’re just really hungry for it.”
Students also appreciated the real-world job experience. Those in Partnerships helped identify local businesses that might offer co-ops to Northeastern students.
“I learned how to work with the team, with Natalie and my other team members,” Munez says.
Bridge to AI workshops were co-taught by Rasika Bhalerao, an assistant teaching professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, and software engineer Jenee Smith. A major focus was prompt engineering: learning to frame questions clearly to get better AI-generated results.
“We learned to contextualize our questions to be able to get better results,” says Orozco, who is interested in nursing and public policy.
The students also grappled with bigger questions about AI, including how it is developed and who has access to it.
“We learned about the rights and wrongs of using AI and how unrepresented communities don’t have access to it,” says Munez, who plans to study finance in college. “But we also learned that AI is coming into pretty much every workforce, so it’s better to get ahead of it than to stay behind.”
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