Teachers: O&R Puts Up $35K For Innovative Classroom STEM Projects

From O&R: Calling all teachers who strive for that, “Oh, Wow!”, moment in their classrooms.

You know who you are.

You are the enthusiastic, hard-working, talented creators of thoughtful, ambitious, interesting, ingenious sparkling lessons that dazzle. You are the teachers who challenge their students to think, plan, act and achieve --- and have fun doing it.

Want to actually implement that outside-the-box classroom project you’ve long dreamed of --- the one that engages, entertains and inspires as well as educates, guides and trains?

Get your proposals ready.

O&R today announced that it will award grants totaling $35,000 to support classroom projects and teacher professional-development initiatives. Those proposals should ride the cutting edge, focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Past successful proposal topics have ranged from drone crop monitoring to robotic competitions to hydroponics and 3-D printed solar vehicle construction.

You get the idea. Go big. Bring your best.

O&R will make 35 STEM Classroom Grants of up to $1,000 each to educators at schools (pre-kindergarten through grade 12) and youth group leaders for the 2017-2018 school year in communities located within O&R’s service area. That encompasses: Rockland and parts of Orange and Sullivan counties in New York and parts of Bergen, Passaic and Sussex counties in New Jersey.

What’s eligible?

Any creative classroom project designed to improve, advance and enrich student learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics will be considered. 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.

Resources requested should 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 and disseminated. Ideally, the successful proposal would focus on the study of electricity and electricity production, natural gas exploration, renewables, and clean energy.

The STEM Classroom Grants Program application can be completed online at www.oru.com/STEM. The application must be received by O&R no later than 5 p.m. on

March 31, 2017. The grants will be awarded in May.

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. It 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.

Photo courtesy of O&R (Last year, these third-graders in Jennifer LaBier’s class at Stony Point Elementary school demonstrated a number of STEM-oriented projects, including three projects funded by O&R’s STEM Classroom Grants program. Pictured here is a winning grant proposal for a magnetic levitation model that helps students explore the principles behind maglev rail and vehicle transportation systems. Examining the maglev model are, from foreground right: Lily Barron, Madelyn Geary, and foreground left, Sofia Roff, O&R’s Lisa Culhane, Amarah Stanley, Teacher Jennifer LaBier and O&R’s Linda Feger.)