LI among 'priorities' for Motorola funds

At the end of May, lots of eyes on Long Island will be focused on Schaumburg, Ill., the home of the giant Motorola company.

Since it acquired Holtsville-based Symbol Technologies in 2006, Motorola has quietly become one of the Island's largest providers of funding to help train students to fill those critically important technology jobs that now drive the economy.

Motorola will be deciding in May how much money to give to nonprofits on Long Island to conduct so-called STEM (science, technology, math and engineering) programs. The programs are held at schools, libraries and museums around the Island.

Matt Blakely, director of Motorola Solutions Foundation, the corporate charitable arm, said that last year the company provided $1 million in funding to the Island for STEM.

Since 2007, Blakely said, Motorola has provided $25.5 million in such funding across the country. He declined Tuesday to say how much he thought the Island's nonprofits might receive in May.

"We only now just got the applications in," Blakely said. "But Long Island is one of our priorities" because Symbol is a major Motorola facility. "We try to be as responsible a funder as we can."

The hope of Motorola and others who invest in STEM programs is that students in the United States will take up careers in engineering or one of the sciences. Blakely cited a recent study by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that showed 15-year-olds in the United States rank 21st in science and 25th in math around the world.

The Plainview-based nonprofit The Early Years Institute, which supports early childhood education, received $110,000 from Motorola last year to conduct a STEM program in the Westbury school district this fall.

Trish Manzi, director of the institute's largest program, Long Island Nature Collaborative for Kids, which will operate the program at Westbury, is an ornithologist.

The Westbury kids will be outdoors studying nature, and then indoors using technology to further their research, Manzi said.

The institute, she said, may apply again to Motorola for funds in 2013.

"We will certainly sit down and consider that," she said.