ENTREMETRIC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Owner, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Diversified Information Technologies
Clifford "Mickey" Melberger '61 M'62, GP'14 earned both his bachelor's in business administration and master's in education from Bucknell. A four-year starter for the football team, Melberger was an outstanding halfback and team captain of Bucknell's 1960 football team that finished 7-2, outscored its opponents 188-59 and won the Lambert Cup as the top team in the East, receiving the Cup on the Ed Sullivan Show. Melberger was Bucknell's leading rusher and led the Middle Atlantic Conference in scoring that year. He received honorable mention All-Middle America Conference and Associated Press Little All-America recognition. He was inducted into the Bucknell Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005. He is the namesake of the Melberger Award, presented annually to an outstanding NCAA Division III football player. While an undergraduate, Melberger was also a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. In the 50 years since his graduation, Melberger has continuously served as a Bucknell volunteer in numerous areas and capacities, including the Career Development Center and on the Bison Club and Alumni Association boards. He and his wife Ruth Ann have led by example in annual and capital giving. They are vice chairs of the Bucknell Campaign, are members of the Campaign Executive Committee, and have set up three scholarships. They have hosted first-year Bison Gathering receptions in northeast Pennsylvania for many years. He served as the leader for this year's 50th Reunion class program and gift committee. He and his wife recently underwrote the high definition filming of the Rooke Chapel holiday concert.
Melberger is the owner, founder and chairman of the board of Diversified Information Technologies, a 29-year-old national and international data and document information management company, headquartered in Scranton, PA with 2,000 associates worldwide. The Diversified company grew out of a business plan created and implemented by Bucknell professor Neil Shiffler and his students. From that plan, Melberger founded Diversified. He is also the owner, founder, and chairman of the board of GreenSpace Properties, LLC, a real estate management and development company. Melberger's firm contributes scholarship funds in the name of the outstanding Bucknell football player in each weekly game. In his professional life, Melberger has hired Bucknell graduates, and has provided internship opportunities.
Melberger has served on various charitable boards and has received numerous business and community service awards. In addition to the scholarships they established at Bucknell, he and his wife have also funded scholarship programs at Wilkes University, where Mickey is a former Trustee and his wife Ruth and son Mickey Jr. are graduates, and Wyoming Seminary where his daughter Erica is a Trustee. He and Ruth Ann reside in West Pittston, PA and also own a farm on the outskirts of Lewisburg which they regularly open to Bucknellians, including coaches and classmates and their families. They recently purchased a home in downtown Lewisburg to more easily visit their grandson, Thomas Romanowski, who just finished his first year at Bucknell. The Melbergers have two children, Erica, married to Tom Romanowski, and Mickey, married to the former Amy Fetch. They also have six grandchildren, Thomas '14, Ann and Kate Romanowski, and Dylan, Kari and Evan Melberger.
Ron was raised in northeastern Pennsylvania and was afforded the opportunity to earn his undergraduate and graduate education through the generosity of others. He was awarded a full athletic scholarship to attend Bucknell University and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He was also awarded a full academic scholarship to attend Harvard University and graduated in 1969 with a Master in Business Administration.
While at Harvard, Ron was impacted by the work of Dr. Abraham Zaleznik who studied the psychological makeup of successful entrepreneurs and who taught an early course in entrepreneurship entitled "Management of New Enterprises". It was from this and other experiences at both Bucknell and Harvard that Ron identified his dream to become a successful entrepreneur not only to benefit his own family but also to give of his time and treasure in order to repay the generosity shown to him by others.
Ron and his wife, Pat, moved to Kansas City in 1970 knowing just two people in the community and without any accumulated capital. Subsequently they have been blessed with three children who were born and raised in Kansas City and with many people in the community who have been friends, investors, business associates, employees, and customers.
Over the years, Ron has been able to use his entrepreneurial and innovative skills to succeed in seven different business endeavors in seven different industries over a 44 year career. The seven were both start-up ventures as well as purchased-and-expanded going concerns with both high and low technology utilization. All included successful exit strategies that have allowed Ron to repay the generosity that was extended to him during his student years by mentoring others in their entrepreneurial efforts and by contributing to the formation and growth of several non-profit community initiatives.
Tim Sweeney has served on the business school faculties of the University of South Florida, St. Bonaventure University, and most recently Bucknell University. His teaching and research has focused primarily on the fields of marketing and corporate strategy.
As an academic educator in a professional field, Tim believes very strongly in the need to engage the business community by taking advantage of professional consulting opportunities. His consultations have included the design of measurement systems and methodologies for identifying corporate brand positions and developing strategies based on those market positioning studies. Along with several colleagues, Tim had started a market research firm that focused primarily on such studies for a number of different corporate clients. In addition to these market research assignments, Tim has conducted executive and management development programs in the USA, Asia, Australia, South America, and Turkey. He also served as an outside director on the board of a publicly held corporation.
Bucknell has recognized Tim's contributions to the University with the Bucknell University Teaching Award in 2003, the ECAC Award for outstanding service to the Bucknell University Department of Athletics/Recreation in 2000, and as the first recipient of the Academic Appreciation Award in 2010, also from the University's Department of Athletics/Recreation. Among Tim's proudest achievements at Bucknell was the development of the Institute for Leadership in Technology and Management (ILTM), an innovative program that brings engineering, business, and liberal arts students together in a collaborative learning environment, a program which Tim co-founded in 1993 and directed for over a decade.
Tim holds a BS and an MBA degree from the University of Scranton, and earned a PhD degree in Business Administration from The Pennsylvania State University.