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Jessica Phillips, a 12-year employee of the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation, is the new superintendent at Mayo River State Park in Rockingham County. Phillips succeeds Keith Martin, who retired as superintendent earlier this year.

A superintendent is the chief of operations and administration at a state park or recreation area and has wide-ranging responsibilities for staffing, training, law enforcement, visitor services, natural resource protection, community outreach and environmental education.

From Historic Halifax in the east to Horne Creek Farm in the west, numerous state historic sites will provide the backdrops for a new virtual music project highlighting some of North Carolina's treasured landmarks.

Debuting Sept. 30, “Singing on the Land” will celebrate the stories of historic sites across North Carolina through the voices of North Carolina musicians. The nine-week series will offer a new release every week on Wednesdays throughout the fall.

In anticipation of Thomas Wolfe’s 120th birthday in October, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial invites students and teachers to participate in the 2020 “Telling Our Tales” Student Writing Competition. In this competition, students will submit their own work of fiction inspired by reading part IV of “The Lost Boy.” 

Historic Stagville State Historic Site, the site of one of the largest plantations in North Carolina, has been accepted to join the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a worldwide network of historic sites that connect the past to present struggles for human rights. A Site of Conscience is a place of memory – a museum, historic site, memorial or memory initiative– that confronts both the history of what happened there and its contemporary legacies. 

The North Carolina Historic Preservation Office has received a $50,000 grant from the Department of Interior, National Park Service (NPS) funded through the Historic Preservation Fund African American Civil Rights grant program to study and document locations associated with the Civil Rights movement in northeastern North Carolina.

Programs celebrating women’s history will be offered at venues of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources in March. This month continues the department’s celebration of women’s fight for suffrage and equality, with the theme, “She Changed the World: North Carolina Women Breaking Barriers.” The commemoration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage from March 2019 to November 2020 will expand on contributions of North Carolina women to the state and nation.

Kimberly Radewicz, a seven-year employee of the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation, is the new superintendent at Eno River State Park in Durham. Radewicz succeeds Keith Nealson, who was named the division’s Chief Ranger last fall after serving as superintendent at Eno River for 10 years.

A superintendent is the chief of operations and administration at a state park or recreation area and has wide-ranging responsibilities for staffing, training, law enforcement, visitor services, natural resource protection, community outreach and environmental education.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the official induction of Jaki Shelton Green as North Carolina’s first African American poet laureate.

Nominations are open for the North Carolina Heritage Award, the state’s highest honor for traditional artists, until Friday, May 1. 

Artists who are recognized within their communities as keepers of North Carolina’s living traditions may be nominated for the award. Past recipients have included musicians, craftspeople, storytellers, dancers, and practitioners of traditional occupations. The award has honored both professionally acclaimed artists and those who practice their art in family and community settings. 

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) has named Eric Dorfman as its next museum director. Currently the director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pittsburgh, he will join the museum in early 2020.

Dorfman’s appointment follows an extensive national search led by a search committee chaired by Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Chief Deputy Secretary Reid Wilson.