Please remember in your prayers Frank Coglitore, 68, a longtime and widely respected member of the University of St. Thomas accounting faculty. He died of cancer this morning, Oct. 21.
Frank Coglitore
Coglitore was a resident of Lakeville for many years; survivors include his wife, Elaine, and a grandson, Kyle, who is a student at St. Thomas.
While details have not been finalized, the family is planning a visitation on Tuesday, Oct. 26, and a funeral on Wednesday, Oct. 27, at White Funeral Home in Lakeville.
“We have lost someone who loved business education at St. Thomas as much as he loved his New York Yankees,” said Dr. William Raffield, a colleague in the Opus College of Business.
Coglitore grew up in New York and enjoyed good-natured bantering with his Twins-fans students. He majored in accounting and minored in philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, went on to receive an M.B.A. at Scranton University, and continued his studies at the University of Minnesota.
When he took the certified public accountant exam in Minnesota, he received the Harold C. Utley Award for having the highest test score in the state.Coglitore taught accounting and auditing at St. Thomas for 27 years and received the university’s highest teaching honor, the Professor of the Year Award, in 2006.
“I truly love going into the classroom and teaching,” he said at the time, “and plan to keep doing so as long as I enjoy working with our students and feel I’m making a contribution.
“While some could consider the field of accounting to be fairly cut and dried, there are many things that are open to interpretation. Our students need to know what is the right thing to do. We instill in them a professional code of conduct.”
Dr. Christopher Puto, dean of the Opus College of Business, said Coglitore’s “approach to his classes and to his students embodies all of the elements we value so highly at St. Thomas.”
