Dr. Cummins was born on July 27, 1911 and raised in the farming village of New Washington, near Bucyrus.  Following his graduation from Ohio Wesleyan University with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1933, he taught mathematics, science, Latin, and music at Sulfur Springs and New Washington High Schools until 1957.  He joined the mathematics department at Kent State (KSU) in 1957, and completed his Ph.D. in mathematics and mathematics education in 1958 at The Ohio State University where Dr. Harold P. Fawcett was his dissertation advisor.  At KSU, Kenneth served briefly as the mathematics department chairperson in the 1960's, but he was most widely known because the National Science Foundation awarded him over thirty grants to conduct summer and academic year institutes for high school mathematics teachers.  These institutes at KSU served approximately 1,000 teachers.  Dr. Cummins made more than 100 presentations at Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics (OCTM) and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) meetings.  He was a frequent featured speaker at meetings of the Ohio Section of the Mathematical Association of America, and the annual fall statistics and mathematics symposium at Miami University.  Dr. Cummins loved to learn in several languages.  In the last month of his life he was studying an advanced geometry text in German.

Every Summer, Dr. Cummins directed the New Washington Band in Saturday night concerts at the gazebo on the village square.  Actually, he directed with his right hand and played trumpet with his left.  He organized the New Washington Community Chorus and directed in performances of Handel's Messiah and other cantatas and oratorios.     

In 1981, when OCTM initiated the Christofferson-Fawcett Award to honor long-term, devoted and inspired service to education in mathematics in Ohio, Dr. Cummins was the clear choice to received the first award.  He always enjoyed sharing the excitement of a new idea he had recently studied or developed.  Dr. Cummins was gifted in teaching the concepts, and conveying the thrill of learning to others.