One Hundred Years, 100 Scholarships
Rutgers alumnus Jim Cullen will reach a special milestone in his giving to Rutgers this year when the scholarship he created is awarded to the 100th Piscataway High School graduate. His endowment has helped reduce students' expenses, allowing them to focus on academics and volunteering.
Jim Cullen’s Piscataway story started long before he was born. The year was 1926, when his grandfather bought property there.
Cullen, who was born in 1942, moved to Piscataway from nearby Dunellen with his parents and his two brothers in 1951.
Hardworking and ambitious, Cullen took a job delivering The Star-Ledger at age 9. “Every morning I had to get up in the dark, and I had to go out and get a bundle of newspapers,” he says.
Delivering newspapers helped him learn how to deal with people, especially adults, which could be challenging for a child, he says. Cullen recalls that one neighbor always claimed that she could not find her pocketbook to pay him, another wanted her paper kept out of puddles and delivered right in front of the door, and yet another neighbor, a bookie, would not pay him if he’d had a bad week. “I had a lot of experience trying to satisfy customers.”
In 1960, he was a member of the first graduating class of Piscataway High School. He went on to Rutgers, graduating in 1964 and launching a celebrated career that culminated in his becoming president and chief operating officer of Bell Atlantic, which later became part of Verizon.
He never forgot where he came from. In 2002, he established the Cullen Family Endowed Scholarship to help other graduates of Piscataway High School, and this year marks the 100th scholarship awarded.
“If you’re coming to Rutgers from Piscataway, as I did, you’re saying to yourself, ‘I’m stepping into a big world and I’m going to have to work hard,’” Cullen says. “‘Nobody's going to give me anything.’”
Piscataway story
When Cullen started looking at colleges, his parents told him not to consider extravagant institutions because they had two other sons to educate. When he received a New Jersey State Scholarship, he decided to study economics at Rutgers. “I think Rutgers is one of the great bargains in this state,” he says.
A commuter student, he was involved with ROTC, the first of many leadership opportunities for him. He served two years as a second lieutenant before he started working for New Jersey Bell, which became part of Bell Atlantic.
On his second day at the company, he met Ann Marie, who would later become his wife. The couple has three children and 10 grandchildren and lives in Summit and Stone Harbor, New Jersey, and Indian Wells, California.
New Jersey Bell selected Cullen for its leadership program and sent him to MIT to pursue his master’s degree. “People would say to me, ‘You have a great business education, economics at Rutgers, and a master’s from MIT,’” Cullen says.
Following Scholarship Graduate’s Successes
Cullen, who studied economics at Rutgers College, established a Rutgers Chair in Economics in 2009 with money he contributed, along with a corporate donation from Verizon. He said he also wanted to do something “practical” to help students, which led him to scholarships for Piscataway students. Every year, Cullen looks forward to attending the scholarship luncheon and enjoys meeting his scholars.
“In the hundred scholarships that have been awarded, I think we’ve only had three or maybe four who didn’t complete all four years,” he says.
The students who attend share their plans, and “I just listen,” he says. “I want them to tell me what they are doing, and I am amazed by all their accomplishments.”
Cullen, who was inducted into the Rutgers University Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2002, still stays in touch with some of the students who have graduated. One returns to the luncheon every few years and brings him a new tie as a gift.
Cullen’s scholarship opened doors for students to help them succeed in life, says Zhenni Lin, who graduated from Rutgers College of Engineering in 2016 and is now a technology development integration and yield engineer for Intel Corporation in California. “It always steered me and opened paths towards a brighter future.”
Lin, a first-generation college student, says she was excited and nervous about attending Rutgers. “I didn’t know what to expect, and I was hopeful but ultimately unsure about what my future college experience would be.”
Ultimately, she graduated from Rutgers summa cum laude with a degree in materials science and engineering and eventually earned her doctorate in materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley.
Receiving the Cullen Endowed Scholarship helped her become more confident, she says. “The Cullen Foundation’s belief in my potential also helped me believe in my future success,” she says.
Cullen said his interactions with Lin and the many other graduates and students who have gone on to do great things confirm a decision he made more than 20 years ago.
“I decided that scholarships are a good way to really try and help people in the real world with real financial issues,” he says. “Every time I go to the luncheon, I say to myself, ‘That was absolutely the right decision.’”
Support the School of Arts and Sciences Scholarship
The Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Scholarship Fund awards scholarships to the next generation of undergraduate students, helping to relieve financial barriers to a world-class education.
