The Colorado Association of Black Professional Engineers and Scientists was founded in the late 1970’s by a group of African-American engineers who shared a desire to increase the minority representation in technical professions. Its mission is to encourage and assist African-American and other under-represented minority youth in the pursuit and attainment of career choices in engineering and applied science professions. The organization was incorporated in the state of Colorado in 1980.

In 1980, CABPES established the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) Chapter No. 3084. The purpose of the JETS Program was to provide middle school, junior high, and high school students exposure to careers in engineering and applied science. Many of the first group of volunteer JETS technical advisors were engineers from AT&T. Some of these advisors have remained active participants since the establishment of the JETS club.  During the fall 1989, the CABPES Technical Resource Center was established at 4301 East Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO.  It provides a centralized place where students receive hands-on training and tutoring through the JETS, MEP and SAT College Preparation programs.  In 1993, CABPES decided to break away from the national organization of Junior Engineering Technical Society because of a difference of opinion on how CABPES wanted to organize its JETS program. As a result of this decision, CABPES changed the name of this program from the Junior Engineering Technical Society to Junior Engineers, Tomorrow’s Scientists. Today's JETS program has evolved because it is CABPES vision to continually pursue the boundless aspects of engineering!  We now offer Aerospace, Lego Robotics, Electronics, Construction Management, Architecture, Civil, Web Design/Programming, as well as Computer Aided Design/ProE.  Each course is a project oriented, comprehensive and best of all hands-on learning experience. 

In 1982, the Math Enrichment Program (MEP) was created to provide traditional math tutoring, homework assistance and computer-based math training to middle school, junior and senior high school students. In 1983, as part of the JETS club, a counseling program was started to further assist students in school and in career development.  In 1986, members of the Hampton Alumni Association started the SAT tutorial program. This program was designed to prepare high school students for taking the SAT College Entrance Examination. In 1988, CABPES offered to share its computer resources and space for this worthwhile endeavor.  And sincee that time the MEP program has remained a grat way for students to gain the skill of learning "How to learn math and science" as opposed to "what to learn."