The Northwest Maritime Center renamed one of its classrooms to the Stan Cummings Classroom in a nod of respect to the late, former executive director who managed the nonprofit from 2007 to 2010.

Stan Cummings, who passed away last year after a tragic bicycle accident on Highway 20, was honored by the maritime center July 6 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its headquarters at the end of Water Street, with an announcement of the new classroom name.

After his death, many people donated to the maritime center, and the contributions were used to add a variety of upgrades to the Stan Cummings Classroom.

It is located on the second floor of the Chandler Education Building, situated on the nonprofit’s campus in Port Townsend.

The classroom now includes major upgrades to state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment, and can be used for distance learning, one of Cummings’ passions.

“The classroom is emblematic of what was important to Stan — the teachers, the students, and the technology that was put in the classroom to enable remote learning,” said former board president Steve Oliver. “Looking back, those investments were prescient, given the pandemic.”

At the ribbon cutting ceremony, Sigrid Cummings — Stan Cummings’ widow — explained that the equipment upgrades were a fitting use of funds considering that her husband was a pioneer of distance learning while previously working at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California.

In 1995 Stan Cummings launched Science Television, a class where a group of fifth-grade students would gather at the Ocean Institute and engage in science-related activities while the sessions were broadcast by a video team to other students from the same schools.

While being broadcast live via satellite to other kids, the on-site students would be able to converse with their schools by telephone and record scientific findings presented to them in their own field logs. This was 25 years before Zoom, and quite groundbreaking for the time, Sigrid Cummings said at the ceremony.

While managing the Northwest Maritime Center, Stan Cummings oversaw the ambitious construction of the nonprofit’s 27,000-square-foot campus near Point Hudson Marina.

“While capital campaigns are challenging enough, Stan succeeded in closing out the campaign at the height of a recession,” said Len Maranan-Goldstein, a director at the maritime center and friend of Cummings.

“Stan’s tenacity and commitment to the success of the construction of the Northwest Maritime Center campus was rooted in his abiding passion for what it would ultimately enable: connecting people to maritime education and other powerful experiences of the sea.”

“Though he was hired to lead the fundraising efforts for the maritime center’s capital campaign, Stan was, at his core, an educator. He was also a pioneer in distance learning,” Maranan-Goldstein added.

In addition to the Stan Cummings Classroom, the late executive director was honored by the Ocean Institute in California with the Stan Cummings Scholar Internship Program.

Currently, there are 25 Stan Cummings Scholars and the number will continue to grow.

In her ceremony speech, Sigrid Cummings expressed gratitude for the outpouring of support from the community following her husband’s sudden passing, and said he would be humbled by the amount of money donated in his honor.

Stan Cummings was born in 1945 in Summit, New Jersey and earned a doctorate degree from Stanford University in California. He developed a variety of educational programs with the Yosemite Institute in California as well as the Ocean Institute.

The Cummings moved to Port Townsend in 2007 after he was hired to become the maritime center’s executive director, and he led the nonprofit’s capital campaign to construct and upgrade a variety of buildings and features to establish the maritime center as a beacon for nautical education, exploration, and engagement in Puget Sound. He retired from the position in 2010.