Philip Doyle

Philip Doyle was born in 1954 in Fresno, California. After graduating from Fresno High School in 1972, a college education was deferred for several years in order to make an informed career choice.  He returned to school in 1976 where he attended Fresno State University; he earned a bachelor’s degree in Communicative Disorders, graduating with honors in 1979.  Following graduation, he relocated to Santa Barbara, where he pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and focused his interest in laryngeal cancer and laryngectomy rehabilitation.  It was also during this period that he met his wife Elizabeth Skarakis whom he married in 1981.

Upon completion of a Master’s degree at UCSB, and while simultaneously taking on his first professional speech-language pathology position at Memorial Rehabilitation Hospital in Santa Barbara, he enrolled in a joint Ph.D. program between UCSB and the University of California, San Francisco, moving to the Bay Area in 1982.  During this period, he worked at the Veterans Administration Medical Center (Fort Miley) under the guidance and encouragement of Dr. Charles Reed.  It was through his work at the VA where much was learned about head and neck cancer, rehabilitation, survivorship, and life through the eyes of those who so unselfishly served their country and where he ultimately completed his Ph.D. from UCSF in 1985.  He has continuing interests in and remains strongly committed to veterans’ issues in both Canada and the United States.

In July 1985, Phil and his wife trekked eastward to Halifax, Nova Scotia where both assumed academic positions at Dalhousie University where he remained until 1991 when both assumed new positions at the University of Western Ontario in London.  He has remained at that institution for the past 16 years where he has taught and continued to expand his program of research in laryngectomy and head and neck cancer.  Work in this area remains his passion and he has taught many undergraduate and graduate students, as well as medical students and residents.  In 2004, he developed and introduced the first formal undergraduate curricular course focusing on "Health Related Quality of Life" at Western, as well as in Canada, introducing undergraduate students with multiple interests to the concept of realizing the importance of the individual on all aspects of health care. Over many years, he has taught numerous and varied courses that focus on voice and speech disorders and rehabilitation, speech-language pathology, and clinical education.  His research in the area of laryngectomy rehabilitation is widely recognized internationally.  He has been a member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for 26 years and was elected a Fellow of ASHA in 1995.

Phil and his wife have two children, Katie and Peter, who remain at home in London.  He is an avid reader, a fan of baseball, finds joy in appreciating the garden, struggles with golf, and enjoys the company of family, neighbors and friends, as well as maintaining a close bond with former students.  Over the past 12 years he also has been actively involved in coaching youth basketball at numerous levels, grade school through high school, where he enjoys "teaching on the hardwood" as well.