O&R Supports School Robotics Programs With Grants

PEARL RIVER, NY — As part of its focus on STEM education development, Orange & Rockland has contributed $5,000 each to help support robotics programs at Clarkstown-North, Clarkstown-South, Nanuet and Tappan Zee high schools.

Students from those schools’ robotic building skills were put to the test recently when more than 1,000 high school students from 46 local and international robotics teams competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition’s Hudson Valley Regional Tournament at the Rockland Community College Fieldhouse in Suffern.

FIRST stands for: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST).

The competition requires that students, within a limited time frame, work with professional engineering mentors to design a robot that solves a problem using a kit of parts and a standard set of rules. Once these high school inventors create the robot, the teams participate in regional competitions that measure the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration and the determination of the students.

FIRST’s President Donald Bossi described FIRST’s mission as inspiring “a lifelong love of learning that is critical to persevere in today’s ever-changing workforce.”

He added, “We’re developing the innovators, technology leaders and creative problem solvers who will make this world a better place.”

The utility's Strategic Partnership’s Manager Linda Feger stopped by to support those teams.

Pictured here, putting the finishing touches on the SO BOTZ team’s entry from Tappan Zee High School in Orangeburg are: SO BOTZ faculty advisor and computer science teacher Karen Connell, O&R’s Linda Feger, mentor/teacher Marc Eckert and SO BOTZ team member and student Lucy Barsanti.

Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. (O&R), a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, is a regulated utility. O&R provides electric service to approximately 300,000 customers in southeastern New York State (where its franchise name is Orange & Rockland) and northern New Jersey (where it’s Rockland Electric Company) and natural gas