William Coyle
Professor Emeritus
After earning an undergraduate degree in accounting at the University of Notre Dame, Professor Coyle took a position as a staff accountant for Price Waterhouse. While at Price Waterhouse, he earned his CPA, was promoted to senior, and worked for six months in Saudi Arabia. Professor Coyle left Price Waterhouse to obtain his M.B.A. at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. While there, he did some teaching and discovered that he wanted to become a professor. Prof. Coyle earned his Ph.D. in Accounting from Texas A&M University in 1993. Professor Coyle came to Babson in 1992 and received tenure in May 1999.
Professor Coyle taught in the undergraduate, graduate, and executive education programs at Babson. Professor Coyle taught Financial Accounting and Auditing in the Undergraduate Program, International Accounting, Forensic Accounting and Government/Non-Profit Accounting in the MSA Program and Financial Accounting in the MBA Program. From 2010 to 2014 Prof. Coyle simultaneously taught Auditing to both Babson undergraduates and undergraduate students at the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University, Russia.
Since 1996 until his retirement, Prof. Coyle was the Director of Russian and Ukrainian Programs. From 1996 to 2014 Prof. Coyle took MBAs to Russia to teach a Russia in Transition course. Prof. Coyle was on the design team of Babson's undergraduate semester abroad BRIC Program and since BRIC’s inception in 2008 through 2019, Prof. Coyle taught the Russian business course. Since 1996, Prof. Coyle brought more than 900 Babson undergraduate and MBA students to Russia.
Professor Coyle's research interests were in financial accounting, auditing and in Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet Union. He has published numerous cases, book chapters and articles about the business environment in Russia, including consideration of how that business environment is affected by geopolitical circumstances. He has traveled to Russia, including Siberia (by choice) and Ukraine, more than 100 times since his first trip to Russia in January 1993.
Prof. Coyle served as a co-chair and elected member of the Undergraduate Academic Policy Committee, a member of the Faculty Senate and was a member of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and served on various sub-committees, including those of the Board of Trustees and on numerous curriculum-related task forces.