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Summer 2003

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W.W. Smith Scholarship Prizes Awarded to Two Seniors
Maureen McKew

For the 23^rd consecutive year, the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust is helping worthy Villanova University students to complete their undergraduate studies.

The trust has awarded Villanova a one-year grant of $106,000 to provide scholarships to needy, worthy, full-time undergraduate students. The trust has expressed a preference for these grants to be awarded to the same student for two or more years. The purpose of the grant is to help students who, for reasons of financial hardship, might not otherwise be able to attend college; for example, so-called "middle class" students who require assistance but are not eligible for traditional sources of support. Since 1979, the trust has awarded $2,220,000 to the University.

The trust also has announced a grant of $10,000 to continue funding the W.W. Smith Scholarship Prize Program. The grant represents two individual grants of $5,000 each to W.W. Smith scholarship grant recipients who are now beginning their senior undergraduate year. The funds are applied to tuition, room and board expenses. Since 1986, when this program was established, it has donated $165,000 in prize money to Villanova students

This year's W.W. Smith Scholarship Prize winners are seniors Christine Boyda and Alex Cohen. Both students have impressive academic records as well as excellent histories of service to their civic communities. Both scholars have made the Dean's List for academic excellence each semester since their enrollment; both have plans for post-graduate study after a period of volunteer service

Boyda is pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering. She has been inducted in Tau Beta Pi (the engineering honor society), for which she serves as president. She also has been inducted into the National Society of Collegiate Engineers and Phi Kappa Phi, the national honor society.

Cohen is a marketing major with an Honors concentration; he also is pursuing a minor in French. He is the first student from Villanova to win the William G. McGowan Scholarship through the College of Commerce and Finance. He has been inducted in the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Gamma Phi (the business honor society),  Beta Gamma Sigma (the honor society of the American Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business),  Pi Delta Phi (the French honor society), and Phi Kappa Phi.

The W.W. Smith Charitable Trust is the legacy of William Wikoff Smith (1919-1976), chairman of the board of the Kewanee Oil Company. Founded in 1908 as an oil transport company, Kewanee later concentrated on exploration and production. In 1948, at the age of 28, Smith became president and proceeded to lead his company through a long and successful period of growth, diversification and acquisition. By 1975, the year before his death, Kewanee achieved gross revenues in access of $357 million.

According to his biography, Smith was a man of many talents, including photography, ship model building and sailing. He also was a generous and discreet patron to many Philadelphia charities through the W.W. Smith Foundation, which he founded in 1951. In 1973, this foundation was liquidated by merger into the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, now known as the Independence Seaport Museum.

Smith died at the age of 56 and in his will he created the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust to carry on his philanthropic work. The trust focuses on addressing human needs, supplementing higher education scholarships, and supporting basic medical research in heart disease, cancers and AIDS.