Northern Kentucky University (NKU) is a public, co-educational university located in Highland Heights, Kentucky, seven miles (11 km) southeast of Cincinnati. NKU is primarily an undergraduate, liberal arts institution, but it also features graduate programs. Total enrollment at the university currently exceeds 15,000 students, with over 13,000 undergraduate students and over 2,000 graduate students. NKU is the third largest university in Greater Cincinnati and the youngest of Kentucky's eight state universities, although it is not the last to join the state system, as the University of Louisville did not become a state university until 1970. NKU ranked at 517 of 600 universities on Forbes Magazine's 2009 "America's Best Colleges" ranking. NKU history began in 1943, when an extension campus for the University of Kentucky was opened in Covington, Kentucky, known as the UK Northern Extension Center. After 20 years in operation as an extension center for UK, it became its own college in 1968, when NKU was founded originally as Northern Kentucky State College (NKSC). In 1970, Dr. W. Frank Steely was hired as the first president. The following year, the Salmon P.