Awards
- Lieber Memorial Associate Instructor Award - 1967
Philip L. Cantelon graduated from Dartmouth College and holds an M.A. from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. in history from Indiana University. He taught contemporary American history at Williams College for nine years and then worked for a year as a policy analyst and speechwriter at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In 1980, Cantelon founded History Associates, which provides professional historical, archival, records management, and litigation research to federal, state, and local governments and to private corporations and professional associations throughout the United States and Europe. Located in Rockville, Maryland, History Associates has about fifty employees and is the largest historical consulting firm in the country, with annual sales of $3.5 million. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Cantelon manages to spend almost 60 percent of his time on contract assignments. In recent years he has written a corporate history of MCI and co-authored histories of the two major U.S. trucking companies, Roadway and CNF transportation.
Cantelon has been professionally active in public history since 1979. He was a founding member of the Society for History in the Federal Government and its first treasurer and was also a founder and first executive director of the National Council on Public History.