• The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution "Recognizing North Carolina Central University on its 100th Anniversary."
• Aaron Houghton and Ryan Allis, Co-Founders of iContact, were named Corporate Volunteers of the Year by Business Leader Magazine.
• Durham-based Cree, Inc. has made a three-year, $1.5 million pledge to provide high-efficiency Cree LED downlights for the kitchens in all new Habitat homes built in the United States.
• The Daily Beast ranked Durham, NC as the #4 Best City for College Graduates.
• Durham Academy Senior Mollie Pathman was honored as the 2009-10 Gatorade National Girls Soccer Player of the Year. Pathman will play for Duke next season.
• Jackie Randell, a Jordan High School student, was awarded first place in the Columns category of the National Federation of Press Women competition.
• E.K. Powe Elementary School was chosen for a "READesign Library Makeover" from The Heart of American Foundation and Target.
• The Durham Literacy Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
• Preservation Durham is celebrating its 35th anniversary.
• LabourLove Gallery is celebrating its first anniversary in Golden Belt.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• Full Frame Documentary Film Festival was named one of the top 50 Film Festivals in the World by Indiewire, the premiere online news for the film industries.
• Duke University head coach Mike Krzyzewski was awarded the New York Athletic Club's Winged Foot Award given annually to the head coaches of the men's and women's NCAA Tournament champions.
• Durham, NC was listed as one of Yahoo Finance's 20 Cities Surviving the Recession.
• The Durham, NC MSA rose by 26 spots, to the 59th strongest economy among 366 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas.
• Stephen Allsop is the first student-athlete in the history of NCCU to be accepted into Harvard Medical School's M.D./Ph.D program.
• Fifteen of Duke's teams received NCAA Public Recognition Awards for ranking in the top 10 percent for Academic Progress Rates within their respective sports. N.C. Central was included in the awards for the first time and received recognition for men's golf, women's track and women's cross country.
• Durham School of the Arts senior Patrick Frame was awarded 1st prize in the District 4 Congressional Art Competition.
• Duke University was awarded a $1.1 million grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. to spearhead an effort in North Carolina to provide access to health care to people living with HIV/AIDS.
• The Latino Community Credit Union is celebrating its 10 year anniversary.
• Durham had the 18th lowest foreclosure rate among the 203 U.S. metros of more than 200,000 people dropping 61% from a year ago despite an increase in the overall foreclosure rate in both North Carolina (+27% from 4/2009) and Raleigh-Cary (+15.91% from 4/2009).

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• The Durham, NC MSA was ranked #1 by Forbes for the Best Mid-Sized Cities [sic] for Jobs.
• Buddy Guy, the legendary blues guitarist, will headline the 23rd Bull Durham Blues Festival, on September 11, 2011 at DPAC.
• A team of students from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics beat out 104 other teams from 42 states to win the 2010 U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl.
• Tom Berry, a Durham native, was honored as North Carolina's sportswriter of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.
• The 2010 All-ACC Women's Golf team included Duke University freshman Lindy Duncan as ACC Player and Freshman of the Year, while senior Alison Whitaker earned All-ACC honors for the third time in her career.
• Papa Mojo's Roadhouse and Watt's Grocery are finalists for the Best Dish in North Carolina's Casual Dining category sponsored by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and Our State magazine.
• Three students with Durham ties were chosen as 2010 U.S. Presidential Scholars; Megan E. Mikhail, Durham Academy Upper School, Saumil A. Jariwala, N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, and Kelley A. Katzenmeyer of Durham.
• The St. Joseph's Historic Foundation, Inc. was awarded a grant in the amount of $100,000 from GlaxoSmithKline to support the GlaxoSmithKline-Charles 'Chuck' Davis Endowment to support dance programs, collaborations with the African American Dance Ensemble (AADE) and the naming of the dance studio at the Hayti Heritage Center in honor of the AADE founder.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• Durham ranked #23 nationally for the Best Places for Business and Careers according to Forbes.
• Duke University's medical school remained tied for sixth place for research, its law school tied for 11th and its business school was ranked 14th and the Pratt School of Engineering rose two places to tie for 33rd in U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings.
  • Duke was also recognized among the top ten in geriatrics (tied for fourth), internal medicine (fifth), AIDS (fifth), women's health (sixth), family medicine (eighth) and pediatrics (tied for ninth). It tied for 42nd in primary care.
  • Duke's law school was tied for ninth in intellectual property law and 10th for international law. Its business school was ranked third in marketing, fourth for executive MBA program, tied for sixth in international, seventh in nonprofit and eighth in management. Within engineering, Duke ranked fourth for biomedical and bioengineering.
  • The environmental sciences program ranked fifth, the immunology/infectious disease program was tied for seventh, nuclear physics tied for eighth and statistics tied for tenth. Finally, Duke ranked 13th in the biological sciences, tied for 24th place in mathematics, 27th in computer science, tied for 30th in physics and 45th in chemistry.
• The Sirens, a women's ensemble of 39 singers at Riverside High School in Durham was recognized for its talents by winning the Triangle Youth Chorus Trophy which is awarded to an ensemble of 20 or more singers in a public school in Durham, Wake, Orange, or Chatham County.
• Duke stands tall in 11th place nationally in the latest Learfield Sports Directors' Cup Standings. The Directors' Cup rankings measure an athletic program's comprehensive sports success by totaling points based on a team's finish in national competition.
• The Durham County Human Resources Department was presented with an Outstanding County Program Award from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC) for their Dependent Eligibility Audit contest entry.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• The King's Daughters Inn earned Green Plus Certification from the Institute for Sustainable Development, bringing the total number of certifications in Durham to four (including the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, Mez Restaurant, and Riley Life Industries.)
• The Durham City's Fiscal Year 2008-2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report merited recognition for the 25th consecutive year by the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada.
• Duke Chapel is celebrating its 75th anniversary this weekend with a series of special events.
• Foster's Market is celebrating its 20th anniversary in May.
• The Durham, NC MSA ranked as the 23rd Best Place for Business and Careers according to Forbes.
• The Republik of Durham was awarded Best of Show by the regional chapter of the American Advertising Federation in the annual ADDY Awards.
• The Durham Police Department's clearance rate has risen in the past 20 years, making its improvement among the best in the nation.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• The Duke University men's basketball team is the 2010 NCAA National Champion. Duke is the fifth school to win at least four NCAA titles, and Coach Mike Krzyzewski became the third coach with four championships.
• The Campus Echo, North Carolina Central University's student newspaper, won nine Excellence in Journalism awards from the Black College Communications Association.
• DPAC - Durham Performing Arts Center hosted three more sellout events in March bringing the total number of sellout events to 48 since opening.
• KeySource Commercial Bank celebrated its third anniversary in March and was ranked the 11th highest in Return On Average Assets by SNL Digest when compared to the other 146 banks also started in 2007.
• Julia Gaffield, a Duke University graduate student, discovered what is believed to be the only known printed copy of Haiti's Declaration of Independence while researching for her doctoral dissertation.
• Trinity School is sending two teams from its robotics program to the "For inspiration and recognition of science and technology" (FIRST) world championships in Atlanta.
• Duke University junior Lindsey Marie Wallace was honored with a prestigious Truman Scholarship. She was chosen based on her academic success, leadership potential and commitment to a career in public service.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• A new iPhone app features Duke's Mike Krzyzewski giving tips to players as they compete in races through Durham and other places while dodging Cameron Crazies and other impediments.
• Ryan Allis and Aaron Houghton, Co-Founders of Durham-based iContact, are featured in the April issue of Entrepreneur Magazine for the way they are helping others while growing their business.
• The N.C. Central University Institute for Homeland Security and Workforce Development has been awarded a grant of $238,992 to design and test an emergency planning management model that can be used by faith-based and community organizations.
• Baseball America selected Durham Bull's outfielder Desmond Jennings for the cover of the 2010 Minor League Preview scheduled for release next week.
• Durham native Chris Hendricks will kick off a 2 month mega-tour as the opening act on the "Life and Faith Tour" which includes Amy Grant, MercyMe, Diamond Rio, Israel Houghton, and others.
• The Kiwanis Club of Durham is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• Durham, NC was named the 4th most affordable city in America on NBC's TODAY Show.
• Anna Frost, director of secondary English and language arts and literacy for Durham Public Schools, was honored by a national book publisher with the National Scholastic Heroes Award from Scholastic Inc. for her work.
• Duke Medicine received a $10.2 million gift from the Robertson Foundation that will help create a state-of-the-art Translational Cell Therapy Center.
• The Durham Herald-Sun was honored by its peers during the North Carolina Press Association awards for 2009 as the first-place recipient for General Excellence, as well as receiving eight other staff and individual awards.
• The Duke men's basketball team has advanced to the sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament and the women's team is hosting LSU tonight in Cameron Indoor Stadium in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will discuss manufacturing jobs and clean energy at Cree, Inc. in Durham on Thursday.
• Duke is tied with UNC for the favorite men's college basketball team in the country according to Harris Interactive.
• The Museum of Life and Science in Durham was the 10th most visited museum or historic attraction in North Carolina according to Carolina Publishing Associates of Matthews.
• Willie Bradshaw, Durham athlete and former Athletic Director of Durham Schools, has been honored as an inductee into the National High School Hall of Fame.
• The Southern Regional Education Board named N.C. Central University one of 15 institutions nationwide that outperform similar schools in graduation rates and student achievement.
• Duke senior volleyball player Rachael Moss was one of 174 collegiate athletes nationally honored with an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship.
• The Duke men's basketball team is the 2010 ACC tournament champs and has secured the overall number 1 seed in the South region in the NCAA tournament.
• The Duke women's basketball team secured the number 2 seed in the Memphis region and will play at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday, March 20.
• Durham native Matthew Lundy, shop foreman at the West Palm Beach, Florida super car shop, Performance Power Racing, helped shatter the world record for the standing mile at 253 miles an hour, more than 6 mph faster than the previous record.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.

• The Duke University women's basketball team finished the season in a tie for the regular-season title and winner of the ACC tournament title. Junior Jasmine Thomas was named the tournament MVP and Coach Joanna P. McCallie, named ACC coach of the year, was the first coach in NCAA history to win coach of the year honors in four different conferences.
• DPAC will host the 2010 national tour debut of "Billy Elliot," the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical opening SunTrust Broadway Series third season.
• Bria Davenport, a junior at Hillside New Tech High School, has been honored for her exemplary service with a President's Volunteer Service Award for service to her community and country.
• Eric Zuber tied for third place in the Eighth National Chopin Piano Competition at the Hannover Hochschule Fur Musik in Germany.
• The Duke University medical center secured a $12 million lead gift toward the creation of a new state-of-the-art Duke Eye Center.
• Matthew Sears, a teacher at Hillside New Tech High School, is one of five North Carolina teachers to win the prestigious Career Awards for Science and Mathematics Teachers from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
• Duke players Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith claimed three of the top seven spots in voting for the All-ACC men's basketball teams.
• Senior point guard Jon Scheyer is in the running as one of six finalists for the Bob Cousy Award by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
• The Comfort Inn on NC 55 in Durham was one of the 301 hotels in the country to earn the Gold Award from Choice Hotels International, Inc.

Five ways to use this information. For more great things, visit www.wheregreatthingshappen.com.