Major Gift From Cincinnati Bell To Promote
CBA's Technology And Global Business Programs

The top growth profession -- by a wide margin -- on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' list of job projections through 2008 is computer systems analyst. That comes as no surprise to either Cincinnati Bell or the UC College of Business Administration (CBA) which has seen top salaries and placement rates for recent graduates in those fields.

Both institutions, aware of work force challenges affecting Cincinnati's future, are now demonstrating their commitment to developing more high-quality workers in information systems and another hot field, global business. A major gift from the Cincinnati Bell Foundation is driving that effort.

The gift of $223,500 will help build and equip two new facilities within CBA - an Advanced Information Technology (AIT) Lab and a Global Business Education classroom. The gift is part of Cincinnati Bell's $500,000 pledge made to the recent Campaign for the University of Cincinnati.

"We have the unique opportunity to contribute to a program that will promote the next generation of technological achievements," said Jack Cassidy, president and chief operating officer of Cincinnati Bell. "This gift benefits not only education, but the futures of companies like Cincinnati Bell that depend on the innovative advantages that the CBA program provides students that will be tomorrow's workforce."

The impact on CBA students should be immediate. The AIT lab, for instance, will provide new opportunities for CBA's highly regarded Information Systems program. The network in the new lab will be 10 times faster than typical networks. It will have two e-business servers - one Microsoft, one Linux - and a database server, along with 16 state-of-the-art workstations.

"With this lab, we'll be able to facilitate faculty and students to experiment with tools and techniques that industry is not yet using," says Uma Umanath, director of the Information Systems program.

The IS program already has access to the most current and powerful industry software for uses like data communications, data modeling, data warehousing, data mining and digital business technologies. Now it will have the ability to push those programs in new directions - research that industry relies on the academic sector to provide.

"For instance, this lab will allow us to bring in leading edge technologies that are not yet in textbooks, such as the latest e-business software, and experiment," says Bipin Prabhakar, assistant professor of Information Systems. "If what we do takes the lab down, that's okay. That's what the lab's purpose is - to serve as an information technology incubator. For the IS faculty, this is a very important need."

Without the improved software and hardware, advanced IS classes faced practical limits because their high-level projects could overload the conventional CBA network.

Even with past limitations, IS students have a track record of producing outstanding projects even at the undergraduate level, such as fully functional e-business Web sites. Demand for the program's graduates is very high, with placement exceeding 90 percent upon graduation over the last two years and average starting salaries at approximately $50,000. Most of the graduates have not had to look far for work, landing with Cincinnati's most prominent corporate names.

The Global Business Education classroom will allow continued development of CBA's extensive global business relationships. CBA last year sent approximately 200 undergraduates and 100 MBA students on international educational trips.

Now those experiences can be augmented and other international learning facilitated in the new classroom, which will be equipped for multi-site distance learning through video conferencing and streaming video capabilities.

"It is difficult to overstate the significance to our college of Cincinnati Bell's generosity," says Fritz Russ, dean of CBA. "Both of these new facilities will increase our ability to provide high quality experiences for our students in fields where demand for skilled graduates is very high."

The Cincinnati Bell gift dovetails with a $1.5 million grant CBA received last summer from the Cleveland Foundation for programs in some of these same areas.