Cyndi Loza

Cohen began his undergraduate studies at DePaul University in 1946 and has worked full time and part time for the university since 1956. He was picked to receive this year’s Illinois CPA Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

I don’t really have a teaching method. I just change based on what is happening in the environment. I always say my reputation is based on the reputation of my students.

I went to high school at Marshall and at that time I sort of took a liking to anything dealing with numbers — mathematics. Therefore, when I was thinking about going to college I thought, “I think I want to go into accounting.” Not knowing at that time that mathematics is really only a small part of accounting.

Morals in accountants are extremely important. Everybody doesn’t know this, but the financial statements that come out are their [responsibility] in [every] way. They can impact hundreds of thousands of people. They can make people lose money. They can have people lose jobs. They can make retirees lose their pension fund. So these people that you read about in the paper that go to jail for losing money, they hurt hundreds of thousands people. … We try to [give] students a sense of morals and ethics.

Financial accounting concerns itself with the financial statements that people outside the company see. Like if you want to buy some stock in a company you take the statements and you have to analyze them. How do you know it’s right? You don’t know it’s right if you’re not an accountant. So you depend on me, a CPA, to tell you.

I was really touched when the Illinois CPA Society called me that I was receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award because most awards you get you apply for and this came out of the blue. I didn’t apply for anything and all of a sudden I got this call.