NKU President Dr. Jim Votruba today celebrated the opening of the dbaDIRECT Student Call Center at NKU in a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony held at the Old Science building on campus in front of a number of local dignitaries.

The dbaDIRECT Student Call Center is located on the NKU campus, and will be used as part of the company's sophisticated and innovative high-tech marketing program. The center employs 4 NKU co-op students. Manager of the new student call center is Bridget Manning, a recent NKU grad.

The dbaDIRECT Student Call Center is the result of a collaborative public/private sector initiative between NKU, the 5/3 Bank Entrepreneurship Institute, the Institute for New Economy Technologies, and the State of Kentucky's Office for the New Economy.

According to Dr. Jim Votruba, president of NKU, “This student call center is a win for everybody: the University, our students, the local community, the Northern Kentucky region, and the state of Kentucky.”

dbaDIRECT is an high-tech, entrepreneurial computer IT services company founded in 1999 and located in Florence, Kentucky. The company has grown from a 2-person startup to its current level of 53 employees. Eight of these employees are NKU alumni, including Lary Runge.

dbaDIRECT has clients in 48 U.S. states, Mexico, and Europe. In the U.S. companies include: Procter & Gamble, Best Buy, Capital One, Bose, and Alberto-Culver. In 2003 the company was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant from the Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation in order to continue its research and development efforts in the area of database technology.