Optimum Announces Commitment to Local Students and STEM Learning Through FIRST® for a Sixth Year in a Row

Optimum’s funding commitment will sponsor over 60 high school teams and six regional competitions throughout its service area for the 2024 FIRST^® Robotics Competition season

Optimum, the provider of advanced internet, mobile, TV, and phone services, today announces its continued partnership with robotics community FIRST^® and its commitment to support FIRST robotics teams across the company’s 21-state footprint. Through this year’s commitment, Optimum is sponsoring over 60 teams for the 2024 FIRST^® Robotics Competition season, which provides students with mentor-based programs to build science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills.

Optimum’s commitment to this community will help supply resources and tools needed for FIRST teams to build and program a robot to perform this season’s challenge, CRESCENDO^SM. In CRESCENDO, teams are challenged to combine their engineering skills and creative power to explore the possibilities of their designs, building and programming of their robots for a music-themed game.

“As a company focused on technology and innovation, Optimum is honored to continue championing programs in our local communities that help inspire and educate future innovators, and our long-standing partnership with FIRST further supports the company’s goals in this space by providing students with resources and opportunities to gain STEM skills,” said Jen Ostrager, Senior Vice President of Community Affairs at Optimum. “Each year we are blown away by the unique and groundbreaking concepts that the students come up with through this program, and we cannot wait to see the different approaches our Optimum-sponsored FIRST teams take in their robot builds during the 2024 season.”

This year, Optimum will also be sponsoring six regional competitions across its footprint, including FIRST Long Island, Mid Atlantic, North Carolina, Texas, NYC, and the Hudson Valley, which returns for the first time since 2019 to allow local high school students an opportunity to showcase and test their robots and continue developing their skills across mechanical and electrical engineering, coding, programming, marketing, communications, leadership, finance, community outreach, and more.

“We are extremely grateful for Optimum’s continued partnership and support of FIRST Robotics Competition,” said Chris Moore, CEO of FIRST. “FIRST aims to not only get students excited about STEM, but about the breadth of opportunities within the field, and to inspire interest in pursuing STEM careers. We are thrilled that Optimum stands alongside us in our collective efforts to prepare young people for their future and look forward to seeing how these students take on this year’s game, CRESCENDO, to combine STEM and the arts to build a better world.”

In addition to Optimum’s annual commitment through FIRST, the company continues to support and foster STEM skill development among high school students across the communities it serves through its annual award program – the Optimum Innovator Awards. Following each competition season, Optimum recognizes and awards grants to local FIRST teams for their innovation and efforts in areas including community engagement, technology, inspiration, diversity, and sustainability. The awarded grants help further support the winning teams’ growth, creativity, and innovation as they prepare for the next season of competitions and find new ways to engineer their robots. Click here to read more about the winners of Optimum’s 2023 Innovator Awards.

To learn more about Optimum’s long-standing partnership with FIRST, visit optimum.com/FIRST.

About Optimum

Optimum is a brand of Altice USA, one of the largest broadband communications and video services providers in the United States, delivering broadband, video, mobile, proprietary content and advertising services to approximately 4.7 million residential and business customers across 21 states. The company operates a4, an advanced advertising and data business, which provides audience-based, multiscreen advertising solutions to local, regional and national businesses and advertising clients. Altice USA also offers hyper-local and international news through its News 12 and i24NEWS networks.

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