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O&R Donates $5,000 To Tappan Zee H.S. Robot Builders; Hands-on Competition Brings High-tech Studies To Life

  • Orange & Rockland Media Relations

  • Pearl River, NJ – February 19, 2020 -- 02:19 PM


As part of its focus on STEM education development, O&R has contributed $5,000 to help support the robotics program at Tappan Zee High School in Orangeburg. Student inventors from Tappan Zee’s South Orangetown Team 6911 SoBOTZ Robotics Team are busy preparing for regional interscholastic competition later this spring on Long Island and later in Manhattan that will put their robotics building skills to the test.

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.

The competitions are designed to inspire a lifelong love of learning that is critical to persevere in today’s ever-changing workforce and to develop innovators, technology leaders and creative problem solvers for the future.

This year, the SoBOTZ team will compete at the School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) Regional #1 March 22- March 25 and the NYC FIRST Regional at the Armory, April 3 - April 5.

Students working on a science project in a classroom.

Testing code on the team’s robot are members of the software subteam: 9th grader Sean Ma, foreground; 12th grader Nicolas Cabrera, middle; and 11th grader Tanishq Singh, right.

About Orange & Rockland

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 service to approximately 130,000 customers in New York.