A North Carolina School of Distinction and back-to-back U.S. News Silver Award winning high school, Central Cabarrus High School (CCHS) was established in 1966 and has taken great pride in producing college and work ready young people for 50 years.  With a mission to graduate “students who are successful, responsible, and contributing citizens in a rapidly changing world,” our reputation for excellence was enhanced in 2012, when we began Cabarrus County’s first high school STEM program.  With a total student population of 1294 , the Central Cabarrus High School STEM  program operates as a school-within-a-school and has grown to 312 students and 22 teachers during the 2023-2024 school year.  Offering over 70 AP/Honors level, 25 clubs, 15 varsity and junior varsity sports, a nationally known masonry department,  AFJROTC, and award-winning arts programs, our school offers all students vast opportunities to blossom as thinkers, athletes, creators, and performers.  Serving a rural population with a free and reduced lunch percentage of 55.1%, students from four feeder schools can apply to the CCHS STEM program as 8th graders.

Built on a foundation of design and engineering, the STEM program fosters a feeling of collaborative inquiry and inventive thinking, skills which students will take with them far beyond our walls.  While the CCHS STEM program is not a National Academy Foundation (NAF), we work closely together with the Career and Technical Education (CTE) department to align our STEM program to provide our STEM scholars with access and post secondary education opportunities.  The CCHS STEM Program Goals are: to provide the tools and space for exploration and invention that foster a culture of collaborative inquiry among faculty and students, emphasize the connections within and between the fields of math and science to all content areas by heavily and meaningfully integrated technology, introduce and continually engage students in the engineering design process, allow the creative processes to be utilized in an innovative problem-solving approach, and highlight the role of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics in an ever-changing, global society and economy to prepare our STEM students for post secondary STEM careers.