1.
North Wilkesboro, North Carolina
–
North Wilkesboro is a town in Wilkes County, North Carolina, United States. The population was approximately 4,116 at the 2000 census and is now 4,245 as of the 2010 census, North Wilkesboro is the birthplace and original home of Lowes Home Improvement, which continues to have a major presence in the community. The town is known as one of the birthplaces of the sport of stock-car racing. Due to the proximity to the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. North Wilkesboro was founded in 1891 when the Norfolk and Southern Railroad built a line into Wilkes County. The line ended on the bank of the Yadkin River opposite Wilkesboro. The town of North Wilkesboro quickly developed around the railroad tracks, North Wilkesboro was the home of the Carolina Mirror Company, which for many years was the largest mirror factory in the United States. Although this is no longer the case, the town close to the industry through Gardner Glass Products Inc. Lowes Foods, one of the Southeasts largest supermarket chains, was started in North Wilkesboro in 1954, Lowes Home Improvement Warehouse, the nations second-largest chain of home-improvement stores, was started in North Wilkesboro in 1946. The factories were a part of the towns economic base. North Wilkesboro does continue to host large corporate offices including Gardner Glass Products Inc, the North Wilkesboro Speedway, located just outside the city limits, predates the founding of NASCAR, the speedway held its first race on May 18,1947 and from there it grew in popularity. On October 16,1949 the Speedway held the 8th and final race of the 1949 NASCAR Strictly Stock Division, the North Wilkesboro Speedway held NASCAR races for 50 years, on September 29,1996 Jeff Gordon would win the final race to be held at the speedway. In 1995, following the death of owner and track founder Enoch Staley. Soon after their purchase, both men announced that they were closing the speedway and moving its two NASCAR race dates to their new tracks in Texas and New Hampshire, the decision met with strong criticism from race fans. Since 1996 several unsuccessful attempts have been made to purchase and reopen the speedway to racing, the Downtown Main Street Historic District, Thomas B. Finley House, Southern Railway Depot, and Wilkes Hosiery Mills are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Wilkes Regional Medical Center, founded in 1951 as Wilkes General Hospital, is located in North Wilkesboro and it is the largest hospital in northwestern North Carolina and is currently the towns largest employer. Recently, Wilkes Regional Medical Center was honored with the Four Star Inpatient service award by Professional Research Consultants, Wilkes Regional Medical Center was established to care for the sick and injured. Its mission is to strive to provide comprehensive, high quality and cost effective health care to the citizens of Wilkes County, Wilkes Regional Medical Center is fully accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
2.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
–
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also known as UNC, or simply Carolina, is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. It is one of the 17 campuses of the University of North Carolina system, the first public institution of higher education in North Carolina, the school opened its doors to students on February 12,1795. The university offers degrees in over 70 courses of study through fourteen colleges, in 1952, North Carolina opened its own hospital, UNC Health Care, for research and treatment, and has since specialized in cancer care. The schools students, alumni, and sports teams are known as Tar Heels, the campus covers 729 acres of Chapel Hills downtown area, encompassing the Morehead Planetarium and the many stores and shops located on Franklin Street. Students can participate in over 550 officially recognized student organizations, the student-run newspaper The Daily Tar Heel has won national awards for collegiate media, while the student radio station WXYC provided the worlds first internet radio broadcast. North Carolina is one of the members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Competing athletically as the Tar Heels, North Carolina has achieved success in sports, most notably in mens basketball, womens soccer. As a result, Womans College was renamed the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in 1955, UNC Chapel Hill officially desegregated its undergraduate divisions. During World War II, UNC Chapel Hill was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission, during the 1960s, the campus was the location of significant political protest. Prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, protests about local racial segregation which began quietly in Franklin Street restaurants led to mass demonstrations, the climate of civil unrest prompted the 1963 Speaker Ban Law prohibiting speeches by communists on state campuses in North Carolina. The law was criticized by university Chancellor William Brantley Aycock and university President William Friday. A group of UNC Chapel Hill students, led by Student Body President Paul Dickson, filed a lawsuit in U. S. federal court, and on February 20,1968, the Speaker Ban Law was struck down. From the late 1990s and onward, UNC Chapel Hill expanded rapidly with a 15% increase in student population to more than 28,000 by 2007. Professor Oliver Smithies was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2007 for his work in genetics, additionally, Aziz Sancar was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015 for his work in understanding the molecular repair mechanisms of DNA. The current chancellor is Carol Folt, the first woman to hold the post, UNC Chapel Hills 729-acre campus is dominated by two central quads, Polk Place and McCorkle Place. Adjacent to Polk Place is a sunken brick courtyard known as the Pit where students will gather, the Morehead–Patterson Bell Tower, located in the heart of campus, tolls the quarter-hour. In 1999, UNC Chapel Hill was one of sixteen recipients of the American Society of Landscape Architects Medallion Awards and was identified as one of 50 college or university works of art by T. A, gaines in his book The Campus as a Work of Art. The universitys campus is divided into three regions, usually referred to as north campus, middle campus, and south campus
3.
Ohio University
–
Ohio University is a large, primarily residential, public research university in Athens, Ohio, United States. One of Americas oldest universities, the second oldest in Ohio, it was chartered in 1787 and approved in 1804, as of 2014, the Athens campus had 23,300 students, the other five campuses had approximately 10,000, and eLearning 5,900. The Heritage College of Medicine maintains its separate select admissions criteria, Ohio University offers more than 250 areas of undergraduate study. On the graduate level, the university grants masters degrees in many of its academic divisions. Ohio University is fully accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifies Ohio as a Research University under the Basic Classification category. Ohios athletic teams are called the Bobcats and compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association at the Division I level as members of the Mid-American Conference. Ohio football has participated in ten games through the 2016 season. George Washington stated the settlement of southeastern Ohio was not accidental, but the result of the deliberation of wise, prudent. The Confederation Congress, which operated under the Articles of Confederation, executive roles transacted from committees of Congress or appointed persons. The Ordinance of 1787 made Ohio University the first ever to be chartered through acts of Congress and this epithet is engraved on the universitys main college gateway. The university was appropriated and envisioned by Manasseh Cutler, credited as the founder along with Rufus Putnam. Cutler had served as a chaplain in Washingtons Continental Army, the institutions first name was American University. President Thomas Jeffersons policy initiatives included an expansion of the new nation. In 1802 approval was granted by the government for the establishment of the American Western University. Ohio University was recognized by the new state on February 18,1804 and this approval came eleven months after Ohio was admitted to the Union. The first three students enrolled in 1809, the university graduated two students with bachelors degrees in 1815. The university was not gifted by the stalwart Republicans with lands and monies for the agricultural, the 20th century brought unprecedented growth in student enrollment, academic offerings, and research facilities. Between 1955 and 1970, the university realized a tripling of enrollment in the post-World War II expansion of college education
4.
Ken Haines
–
He is the President and CEO of Raycom Sports. Haines has lived in Spokane, Washington, Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, and Lexington, Massachusetts and his father, Kenneth A. Haines, was an administrator with the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the U. S. State Department. He has one brother, Tom, who was an executive for the state of Washington in Seattle, Haines received his bachelor’s degree from Dakota Wesleyan University, Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1964. Graduate work at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming and he earned a Master’s of Science from Troy State University, Troy, Alabama, in 1970. He completed advanced studies at Virginia Tech in 1976. Haines served as student body president at Dakota Wesleyan University in 1962 and he served as president of the University Faculty Club at Virginia Tech 1979-1981. Haines was a member of the board at Virginia Tech 1976-1980. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Sunshine Football Classic in Fort Lauderdale, Haines was executive director of the Charlotte LPGA golf tournament,1997. He is on the Board of Directors of Charlotte Collegiate Football, in 2007, Haines was published in the Charlotte Business Journal, contributing a piece called A Tribute to Community. While in Laramie he managed KLME radio and established KUWR radio and he served in the US Army from 1968-1970 in flight operations. At Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, Haines served as the executive to the university president and he acquired WVTF, a National Public Radio station, for Virginia Tech and created the Virginia Tech Sports Network. He served as the game analyst on the radio network, in 1981, Haines joined in the formation of Raycom Sports in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he negotiates television and new media digital contracts for Atlantic Coast Conference sports. From 1985 to 1995 he negotiated contracts for Big Ten, Pac-10, Big Eight, Southwest Conference. He also oversaw negotiations with ABC, CBS, ESPN and Fox Broadcasting Company for coverage of football and basketball games. Haines is also known for the attempt to form a college football game in Russia
5.
Blue Ridge Mountains
–
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. This province consists of northern and southern regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap. The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, starting at its southernmost portion in Georgia, then ending northward in Pennsylvania. To the west of the Blue Ridge, between it and the bulk of the Appalachians, lies the Great Appalachian Valley, bordered on the west by the Ridge, the Blue Ridge Mountains are noted for having a bluish color when seen from a distance. Trees put the blue in Blue Ridge, from the isoprene released into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to the haze on the mountains. Within the Blue Ridge province are two national parks, the Shenandoah National Park, in the northern section, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Blue Ridge also contains the Blue Ridge Parkway, a 469-mile long scenic highway that connects the two parks and is located along the ridge crestlines with the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge extends as far north into Pennsylvania as South Mountain. The Blue Ridge contains the highest mountains in eastern North America south of Baffin Island, about 125 peaks exceed 5,000 feet in elevation. The highest peak in the Blue Ridge is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet. There are 39 peaks in North Carolina and Tennessee higher than 6,000 feet, by comparison, Southern Sixers is a term used by peak baggers for this group of mountains. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs 469 miles along crests of the Southern Appalachians, in many places along the parkway, there are metamorphic rocks with folded bands of light-and dark-colored minerals, which sometimes look like the folds and swirls in a marble cake. Most of the rocks that form the Blue Ridge Mountains are ancient granitic charnockites, metamorphosed volcanic formations, modern studies have found that the basement geology of the Blue Ridge is made of compositionally unique gneisses and granitoids, including orthopyroxene-bearing charnockites. Analysis of zircon minerals in the completed by John Aleinikoff at the U. S. Geological Survey has provided more detailed emplacement ages. Many of the found in the Blue Ridge and documented by Tollo. The lack of an affinity and zircon ages less than 1,200 Ma suggest that the Blue Ridge is distinct from the Adirondacks, Green Mountains. The petrologic and geochronologic data suggest that the Blue Ridge basement is a composite orogenic crust that was emplaced during several episodes from a magma source. Field relationships further illustrate that rocks emplaced prior to 1, 078-1,064 Ma preserve deformational features and those emplaced post-1,064 Ma generally have a massive texture and missed the main episode of Mesoproterozoic compression. The Blue Ridge Mountains began forming during the Silurian Period over 400 million years ago, approximately 320 Mya, North America and Europe collided, pushing up the Blue Ridge
6.
Boston College
–
Boston College is a private Jesuit Catholic research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States,6 miles west of downtown Boston. It has 9,100 full-time undergraduates and almost 5,000 graduate students, the universitys name reflects its early history as a liberal arts college and preparatory school in Bostons South End. It is a member of the 568 Group and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and its main campus is a historic district and features some of the earliest examples of collegiate gothic architecture in North America. Boston Colleges undergraduate program is currently ranked 31st in the National Universities ranking by U. S. News & World Report, Boston College is categorized as an R1, Highest Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Students at the university earned 21 Fulbright Awards in 2012, ranking the school eighth among American research institutions, Boston College sports teams are called the Eagles, and their colors are maroon and gold, the school mascot is Baldwin the Eagle. The Eagles compete in NCAA Division I as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference in all sports offered by the ACC, the mens and womens ice hockey teams compete in Hockey East. Boston Colleges mens ice hockey team is one of the most decorated programs in the nation, in 1825, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, S. J. A Jesuit from Maryland, became the second Bishop of Boston and he was the first to articulate a vision for a College in the City of Boston that would raise a new generation of leaders to serve both the civic and spiritual needs of his fledgling diocese. In 1827, Bishop Fenwick opened a school in the basement of his cathedral and his efforts to attract other Jesuits to the faculty were hampered both by Bostons distance from the center of Jesuit activity in Maryland and by suspicion on the part of the citys Protestant elite. Meanwhile, the vision for a college in Boston was sustained by John McElroy, with little fanfare, the colleges two buildings—a schoolhouse and a church—welcomed their first class of scholastics in 1859. Two years later, with as little fanfare, BC closed again and its short-lived second incarnation was plagued by the outbreak of Civil War and disagreement within the Society over the colleges governance and finances. BCs inability to obtain a charter from the anti-Catholic Massachusetts legislature only compounded its troubles, on March 31,1863, more than three decades after its initial inception, Boston Colleges charter was formally approved by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. BC became the second Jesuit institution of learning in Massachusetts. A Swiss Jesuit from French-speaking Fribourg, was selected as BCs first president, for most of the 19th century, BC offered a singular 7-year program corresponding to both high school and college. Its entering class in the fall of 1864 included 22 students, the curriculum was based on the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, emphasizing Latin, Greek, philosophy, and theology. Boston Colleges enrollment reached nearly 500 by the turn of the 20th century, in 1907, newly installed President Thomas I. Gasson, S. J. determined that BCs cramped, urban quarters in Bostons South End were inadequate, inspired by John Winthrops early vision of Boston as a city upon a hill, he re-imagined Boston College as world-renowned university and a beacon of Jesuit scholarship. Less than a year after taking office, he purchased Amos Adams Lawrences farm on Chestnut Hill and he organized an international competition for the design of a campus master plan and set about raising funds for the construction of the new university
7.
Virginia Tech
–
Through its Corps of Cadets ROTC program, Virginia Tech is also designated as one of six senior military colleges in the country. Under the 1891–1907 presidency of John M. McBryde, the school organized its academic programs into a traditional four-year college, the evolution of the schools programs led to a name change in 1896 to Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. The Agricultural and Mechanical College portion of the name was popularly omitted almost immediately, in 1944, in 1923, VPI changed a policy of compulsory participation in the Corps of Cadets from four years to two years. In 1931, VPI began teaching classes at the Norfolk Division of the College of William and this program eventually developed into a two-year engineering program that allowed students to transfer to VPI for their final two years of degree work. In 1943, VPI merged with nearby Radford State Teachers College, which became VPIs womens division, today, Radford University enrolls more than 9,900 students and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate programs. During Hahns tenure, not only did the university graduate its first Rhodes Scholar, lewis, Class of 1963, the requirement for male students to participate in the Corps of Cadets for two years was dropped. Beginning in the fall 1973, women could participate in the corps, in 1970, the state legislature allowed VPI university status and gave it the present legal name, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. However, diplomas and transcripts still spell out the formal name, similarly, the abbreviation VT is far more common today than either VPI or VPI&SU. The early decades of this century have seen expansion across the universitys institutions in both physical and population sizes, former President Charles Steger brought Virginia Tech an allopathic medical school in 2007. The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute was created with a partnership with the Carilion Clinic. These years also brought about the development of the universitys professional schools of graduate education. Virginia Tech brought in over a half-billion in research expenditures in 2014, on April 16,2007, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho fatally shot 32 faculty members and students, wounding 17 others before killing himself on campus. The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting on a college campus, although it was at the time the deadliest mass shooting committed by a lone gunman in U. S. history, it has since been surpassed by the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. These colleges/schools include, Virginia Tech received a number of nearly 22,500 applications for the fall 2015 freshman class. The typical student offered admission had a grade point average of 4.00. The average cumulative SAT score was 1250, with a middle range ranging from 1160 to 1340, of the 5,518 students who accepted the offers of admission,18 percent accepted under the Early Decision Plan. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions is located within the Visitor and Undergraduate Admissions Center, once admitted, Honors students are required to maintain a 3.5 GPA in order to remain in the program. For the 2013–14 academic year, the Graduate School at Virginia Tech enrolled 6,723 graduate students in its masters, the Pamplin College of Business, received 381 applications for its incoming Evening MBA program, and offered admission to 142
8.
University of Miami
–
The University of Miami is a private, nonsectarian research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. As of 2015, the university enrolls 16,848 students in 12 separate colleges/schools, the university offers 116 undergraduate,105 masters, and 63 doctoral degree programs, of which 59 are research/scholarship and four professional areas of study. Over the years, the students have represented all 50 states. With more than 14,000 full and part-time faculty and staff, uM’s main campus in Coral Gables has 239 acres and over 5.7 million square feet of buildings. In the 2017 U. S. News and World Report study of colleges and universities, Research is a component of each academic division, with UM attracting $346.6 million per year in sponsored research grants. UM offers a library system with over 3.1 million volumes and exceptional holdings in Cuban heritage. UM also offers a range of student activities, including fraternities and sororities. UMs intercollegiate athletic teams, collectively known as the Miami Hurricanes, UMs football team has won five national championships since 1983 and its baseball team has won four national championships since 1982. They believed that a university would benefit their community. They were overly optimistic about future financial support for UM because the South Florida land boom was at its peak, the university began in earnest in 1925 when George E. Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables, gave 160 acres and nearly $5 million, to the effort. These contributions were land contracts and mortgages on real estate that had sold in the city. The university was chartered on April 18,1925 by the Circuit Court for Dade County. By the fall of 1926, when the first class of 372 students enrolled at UM, the boom had collapsed. For the next 15 years the university barely remained solvent, the construction of the first building on campus, now known as the Merrick Building, was left half built for over two decades due to economic difficulties. In the meantime, classes were held at the nearby Anastasia Hotel, with partitions separating classrooms, in 1929, Walsh and the other members of the Board of Regents resigned in the wake of the collapse of the Florida economy. UMs plight was so severe that students went door to door in Coral Gables collecting funds to keep it open, a reconstituted ten-member Board was chaired by UMs first president Bowman Foster Ashe. The new board included Merrick, Theodore Dickinson, E. B, douglas, David Fairchild, James H. Gilman, Richardson Saunders, Frank B. Shutts, Joseph H. Adams, and J. C, in 1930, several faculty members and more than 60 students came to UM when the University of Havana closed due to political unrest
9.
University of Pittsburgh
–
The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1787 after the American Revolutionary War, it was founded on the edge of the American frontier as the Pittsburgh Academy and it developed and was renamed as Western University of Pennsylvania by a change to its charter in 1819. For most of its history, Pitt was a private institution, the university also includes four undergraduate schools located at campuses within Western Pennsylvania, Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown, and Titusville. The 132-acre Pittsburgh campus has multiple contributing historic buildings of the Schenley Farms Historic District, most notably its 42-story Gothic revival centerpiece, the university has an annual operating budget of approximately $2 billion, which includes nearly $900 million in research and development expenditures. It is the second-largest non-government employer in the Pittsburgh region behind UPMC, Pitt is ranked among the top public universities in the United States in both domestic and international rankings, and has been listed as a best value in higher education by several publications. Pitt students have access to arts programs throughout the campus and city. Pitts varsity athletic teams, collectively known as the Pittsburgh Panthers, compete in Division I of the NCAA, primarily as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Founded by Hugh Henry Brackenridge as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh is one of the few universities and colleges established in the 18th century in the United States. It is the oldest continuously chartered institution of learning in the U. S. west of the Allegheny Mountains, the school began as a preparatory school, presumably in a log cabin, possibly as early as 1770 in Western Pennsylvania, then a frontier. A brick building was erected in 1790 on the side of Third Street. The small two-story brick building, with a gable facing the alley, within a short period, more advanced education in the area was needed, so in 1819 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania amended the schools 1787 charter to confer university status. The school took the name the Western University of Pennsylvania, or WUP, by the 1830s, the university faced severe financial pressure to abandon its traditional liberal education in favor of the state legislatures desire for it to provide more vocational training. The decision to remain committed to liberal education nearly killed the university and it was also during this era that the founder of Mellon Bank, Thomas Mellon, graduated and later taught at WUP. The universitys buildings, along with most of its records and files, were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1845 that wiped out 20 square blocks of Pittsburgh, classes were temporarily held in Trinity Church until a new building was constructed on Duquesne Way. Only four years later, in 1849, this also was destroyed by fire. Due to the nature of these fires, operations were suspended for a few years to allow the university time to regroup. By 1854, WUP had erected a new building on the corner of Ross and Diamond streets, langley was professor of astronomy and physics and remained at WUP until 1891, when he was succeeded by another prominent astronomer, James Keeler. Growing quickly during this period, WUP outgrew its downtown facilities, the university eventually found itself on a 10-acre site on the North Sides Observatory Hill at the location of its Allegheny Observatory
10.
Syracuse University
–
Syracuse University, commonly referred to as Syracuse, Cuse, or SU, is a private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. The institutions roots can be traced to the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded in 1831 by the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, after several years of debate over relocating the college to Syracuse, the university was established in 1870, independent of the college. Since 1920, the university has identified itself as nonsectarian, although it maintains a relationship with The United Methodist Church, the campus is in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, east and southeast of downtown, on one of the larger hills. Its large campus features a mix of buildings, ranging from nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival structures to contemporary buildings. Syracuse University athletic teams, known as the Orange, participate in 20 intercollegiate sports, SU is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference for all NCAA Division I athletics, except for the mens rowing and womens ice hockey teams. SU is also a member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference, the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary was founded in 1831 by the Genesee Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, south of Rochester. In 1850, it was resolved to enlarge the institution from a seminary into a college, or to connect a college with the seminary, however, the location was soon thought by many to be insufficiently central. Its difficulties were compounded by the set of technological changes. The trustees of the college then decided to seek a locale whose economic. Meanwhile, there were years of dispute between the Methodist ministers, Lima, and contending cities across the state, over proposals to move Genesee College to Syracuse. At the time, the ministers wanted a share of the funds from the Morrill Land Grant Act for Genesee College and they agreed to a quid pro quo donation of $25,000 from Senator Cornell in exchange for their support for his bill. Cornell insisted the bargain be written into the bill and Cornell became New York States Land Grant University in 1865. In 1869, Genesee College obtained New York State approval to move to Syracuse, but Lima got an injunction to block the move. By that time, however, the injunction had been made moot by the founding of a new university on March 24,1870. On that date the State of New York granted the new Syracuse University its own charter, the City of Syracuse had offered $100,000 to establish the school. Bishop Jesse Truesdell Peck had donated $25,000 to the school and was elected the first president of the Board of Trustees. Rev. Daniel Steele, a former Genesee College president, served as the first administrative leader of Syracuse until its Chancellor was appointed, the university opened in September 1871 in rented space downtown. George F. Comstock, a member of the new Universitys Board of Trustees, had offered the school 50 acres of farmland on a hillside to the southeast of the city center
