Cummings Foundation, Inc. (CFI) developed the McKeown Scholars Program in 1996, in memory of James L. McKeown, late president of Cummings Properties and former managing trustee of the Foundation, who died suddenly in 1996 at the age of 41.

Each spring in Mr. McKeown's honor, CFI awards numerous $5,000 merit scholarships to outstanding college-bound high school seniors in Woburn, Beverly, Winchester, Stoneham, and Wilmington Massachusetts. As of June 2006, through the McKeown Scholars Program and CFI's other scholarship programs, CFI has awarded in excess of $1,500,000 in scholarships to more than 750 very accomplished area high school seniors

James L. McKeown

Mr. McKeown was a well known business leader, widely respected for his outstanding professional expertise, as well as his unwavering integrity, compassion, and far-reaching desire to provide opportunities to others, particularly young people. He left his wife, Denise, and two very young daughters, Kelly and Molly.

A Woburn native and graduate of Woburn High School, Salem State College, and University of Vermont, Mr. McKeown also studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and had lectured at Massachusetts Center for Continuing Legal Education. He was a marathon runner, competitive swimmer, bicyclist, golfer, and tennis player.

Spending his entire working career with Cummings Properties, Mr. McKeown maintained many community roles, including service as a member and treasurer of Woburn Industrial Development Finance Authority and president of Woburn Business Association. He was once selected as "Boy of the Year" at what is now Woburn Boys and Girls Club. Closely associated with that organization nearly all his life, he went on to become the first-ever Boys and Girls Club alumnus to be elected a director, and then served two terms as its youngest president, as well.

James L. McKeown School (click on)

Eligibility and selection criteria for the McKeown Scholars Program represent qualities, values and achievements Mr. McKeown embodied and would most likely have considered himself in determining award recipients. Some of these criteria include scholarship, excellent writing ability, community service, reputation for fairness and integrity, and a demonstrated concern for helping others.

The McKeown Scholars Program per se recognizes the very top high school graduates in most of the communities where CFI has significant interests. To be considered as potential McKeown Scholars, candidates must be in the upper 20 percent of their graduating class, and must then write a 500-word essay under exam conditions on a subject that is first announced at the hour of the essay competition.

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All essays are then number-coded and anonymously graded, and a committee at each high school selects the actual $5,000 merit award winners for that community. Selection is based on essay results and personal interviews, plus other evidence of each candidate's writing skills, community service, and overall aptitude. Financial need is not considered, and CFI has no direct involvement in the actual selection of any winners. All winners also receive handsome commendatory plaque at an award ceremony at their respective community's high school.

In addition to the McKeown Scholars Program, Cummings Foundation, Inc. now makes lump sum donations to the annual high school scholarship campaigns in communities where it owns substantial properties or has other special interests. These funds are then disbursed at the individual communities' discretion, based on students' merit and/or financial need, as applicable. The McKeown Scholars Program, however, is administered separately and with its own established procedural regulations.

The Foundation's scholarship program is directly designed to focus extra community attention on improving the writing ability of local area students. In that regard, its interests closely parallel the business strategy of Cummings Properties, which for decades has placed a very heavy emphasis on hiring people with outstanding writing ability, and then helping them to further improve it.

Every year since 1973, for example, Cummings Properties has routinely required all applicants for any management-level position to complete a standard written editing exercise. The results of these exercises then weigh heavily in all hiring decisions. The company has also routinely brought in outside writing instructors to work with employees of all levels in regular after-hours writing clinics.

This is not at all unlike the "enlightened self interest" policies so famously promoted by Cummings Properties' predecessor, United Shoe Machinery Corporation (USMC), in Beverly, a hundred years ago. Like USMC, the Foundation strongly supports the notion that it can positively affect the education level of the area's workforce, simultaneously helping it and its 1,800 tenant firms to be more competitive.

Timeline for Participating Communities - 2008

Scholarship Application - 2008

Names of current Scholarship Winners

The remarkably high quality submissions of all of these young students have been reformatted for uniformity, but have not been edited in any way. Please click on any winner's name to view the student's photograph and written essay.