The first thing Phil Cottell did after graduation – that afternoon, actually – was to marry Linda Turner, which he says, 40 years later, is still the best decision he ever made.

After graduation Phil went to work for Ernst and Ernst. Soon afterward, in order to fulfill his R.O.T.C. obligation, Phil went into the Army and served in Germany and Vietnam. He was having so much fun that he stuck around for eleven years. While in the Army, to the raised eyebrows of those who knew him at W&L, he went back for more education, earning his master’s degree in 1976 and his doctorate in 1982, both from the University of Kentucky.

Today Phil is professor of accountancy at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he has taught for 26 years. In 2004 he won the E. Phillips Knox award for excellence and innovation in undergraduate teaching at that 15,000-student institution. He is the coauthor of two books, including the desperately needed Accounting Ethics: A Practical Guide for Professionals and Cooperative Learning for Higher Education Faculty, and has presented enough papers at conferences to take up five pages of his résumé.

Phil and Lin are the proud parents of a daughter, Sigrid Page, 38 (goddaughter of your equally proud newsletter editor), who’s the office manager for a veterinarian and the mother of two young children; and Philip III, 34, who works for Progressive Corp. and who also has two children. Phil’s hobbies are dog training, gardening and sailing, and he and Lin are active in Lifepoint Vineyard church.

Front row, left to right: Grant Cottell (Philip III’s son; Phil and Lin’s youngest grandson); Taryn Cottell (Philip III’s wife); Mahlon Page (daughter Sigrid’s son, their oldest grandson); Phil’s mother, Audrey (this picture was taken on her 90th birthday); daughter Sigrid Page, holding granddaughter Libby. Back row: “Skipper” Cottell (the grandchildren's nickname for Phil); the amazing Lin; Philip III, holding grandson Gavin; Ann Schatzinger, Phil's sister; Jon Schatzinger (Ann’s husband); their son Tom Schatzinger; and Frank Page, Sigrid’s husband.

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