O&R Plans to Award $50K to the Area's Best Classroom STEM Projects
Orange and Rockland Utilities (O&R) plans to award $1,000 STEM Classroom Grants to as many as 50 educators at schools (pre-kindergarten through grade12) and youth groups for the 2022-2023 school year in communities located within O&R’s service area.
Grants will be awarded based on a review by the O&R STEM Education Advisory Council, a panel of educators and engineers assembled by O&R expressly for this process. The STEM Education Advisory Council will award grants to creative classroom projects designed to improve, advance, and enrich student learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Each applicant may request up to $1,000 to be used toward purchasing materials and resources for their project. The resources must be integral components of a well-planned classroom project/lesson plan and important to its success. O&R seeks educational proposals that range from formative ideas that explore learning concepts to fully tested models that are ready to be adopted or built. Ideally, the successful proposal would focus on the study of electricity and electricity production, natural gas exploration, renewables, and clean energy.
Past winning proposal topics have ranged from drone crop monitoring and robotic development, to hydroponics and 3-D printed solar vehicle construction.
These third graders in Stony Point Elementary School are hard at work on a STEM-oriented project funded by O&R’s STEM Classroom Grants program. This is a 2017 file photo. It was taken before COVID-19 health precautions, such as masking, were initiated.
“An Application of the Engineering Design Process” is the name of this STEM Classroom Grant winner at Washingtonville Senior High School from last year. The project’s mission was for students to build a single-person cardboard boat and race it against other home-made cardboard boats in the school’s pool. The mission’s goal was for students to understand that the race would apply the concepts of buoyancy, density, and the balancing of forces to create a device that is capable of floating.
Members of Jodi Sardanis’ fifth grade class at Northvale Elementary School shine as they inspect the inner workings of the solar power station built in their school’s courtyard for student science lessons. The station was built thanks to an O&R STEM Classroom grant of $1,000 and a grant of $300 from the Northvale PTO. This is a 2017 file photo. It was taken before COVID-19 protections, such as masking, were initiated.
Last year, O&R awarded grants totaling nearly $37,000 to support over 40 creative, cutting-edge classroom STEM projects. Over the past seven years, O&R has awarded 277 STEM Classroom Grants totaling nearly $247,000. Those grants ranged from $307 to $1,000.
O&R President and CEO Robert Sanchez said, “Last year’s STEM grant recipients demonstrated admirable resilience and unwavering commitment to their students’ education. They truly are our classroom heroes. Their proposals were impressive in scope and application and are sure to inspire learning for a brighter future.”
The application process is now open. The STEM Classroom Grants Program application can be found online. The proposal application must be received by O&R no later than March 31, 2022. The grants will be awarded in May.
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.