Home Is Where Your Heart Is

The Research Triangle Park is home to over 38,000 full time workers and over 1 million residents (“Also Known as Smartsville, USA”). Since I was born, my family has been part of the growing population of the Research Triangle Region. My parents moved here in the late 1980s because my father had an internship at GlaxoSmithKline and my mother was pursing her career as a veterinarian, but they also knew that the region had good public schools and world class universities. The Research Triangle region is an important place in my family’s heritage because the job opportunities that were available to my parents, the public schools in the region, and the excellent universities in the surrounding area.

Burroughs Welcome Company was founded in 1880 by Silas Burroughs and Henry Welcome who lived in the UK, and although it started out as a small pharmaceutical company, Burroughs Welcome grew to be one of the largest drug manufacturers in the world, and is now known as GlaxoSmithKline (Link 113). The Company has facilities located all over the world and it just so happens that the US headquarters are located in Research Triangle Park. The facility was dedicated in 1972, around the same time period that many other big-named corporations decided on RTP as their new home (Link 29). While in college, my father majored in chemistry and after spending a summer interning at Glaxo, he moved down to start his new job in 1987. The year after my father moved down to start his job with GlaxoSmithKline, my mother, Gretchen bought her own veterinary practice in Durham. This was before my parents had even met, but they moved to the triangle region for very similar reasons; because they were aware of the job opportunities in the area. Research Triangle Park is one of the largest science-tech parks in the nation, ranking first in terms of number of acres as well as employees (Link 57). Due to the Park’s large size and the large amount of employees that it pulls in, the park is an extremely attractive place to live for people in the science-tech fields. Therefore when considering where to move to after graduate school, my parents choices were made relatively easy by the booming economic status of the area and the persuasive job offers. The economic well-being and plentiful number of jobs was certainly one of the main reasons why my parents each chose to move to The Triangle, however why they decided to stay was determined by the quality of education for their children; my sister and me.

One of the primary factors that anyone who is moving to a new location considers before they move is the quality of schools in the region. The quality of schools is a relatively accurate measurement of the economic status of the area and therefore important to take into consideration. Part of the reason that my parents chose to stay in RTP is because the public schools in the area are very good and after they met and got married they knew that they would be sending my sister and me to public schools. In a recent article of The Daily Tarheel, a picture of a map dotted with numbered locations was entitled “Where Do Most UNC Students Come From?” (Graves). The map, pictured up top, displays in a illustrative way the top 20 highschools that UNC students came from for the 2011 incoming class. As the map shows, out of the top 20 schools that UNC students came from, 12 of them are located in Research Triangle Park (Graves). These statistics are a clear testament to the quality of schools in the Research Triangle Region. When moving to Research Triangle Park, my parents were aware of the good reputation of the public schools and took this into consideration when deciding if it was where they wanted to raise a family. Although I did not go to one of the top 20 schools that UNC students came from, my school, however small, was excellent compared to many of the schools in other parts of the state. The public schools in the Research Triangle region played into my parent’s decisions to live in the area, but it was the great universities in the region that played a large part as well.

The engines that have kept Research Triangle Park running since its inception are the great universities that surround the park. Duke, NC State, and UNC are the primary motivators behind the research and sustained development within RTP (Link 2). The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is where my family’s heritage continues to develop since that is where I now attend school. My parents made the decision to move to RTP and remain there to have a family not only because of the good public schools, but also because of the nationally ranked universities encompassing the park. Not only do the universities fuel the region’s continued economic growth, but they are also a great place to send a kid off to college. My parents knew that when I got old enough I would have many options in the way of universities because the colleges in the area are so good. In addition to the educational and economic benefits that the universities provide, they also benefit Research Triangle Park by having top-notch hospitals. The hospitals in the research triangle region were yet another important factor that my parents took into their decision to live in the Research Triangle region. In fact, the hospitals play an important role in many people’s decisions to live in the area because although many areas have excellent universities and jobs, not all of them have great hospitals as well. The universities of Duke, NC State, and UNC and their respective hospitals are merely icing on the RTP cake. Together, these universities have driven RTP to economic and social well-being and have also provided me with an incredible opportunity to go to college at one of the best public universities in the nation.

The decision that my parents made to move to Research Triangle Park have had a lasting effect on my family’s heritage. The region has been a central component to my family’s life since my parents decided to move here in the late 1980s. The Research Triangle Region has had such a large effect on my family’s heritage because of the job opportunities that were available to my parents, the public schools in the region, and the excellent universities in the surrounding area.

-Chris Martin

Works Cited

Link, Albert N. From Seed to Harvest: The Growth of The Research Triangle Park.

Research Triangle Park, NC : Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, 2002. Print.

“Also Known as Smartsville, USA.” Researchtriangleregion.org. N.P. 2011. Web. 12 November 2011.

Graves, Sarah. “Where Do Most UNC Students Come From?” Dailytarheel.com. N.P. 25 October 2011. Web. 12 November 2011.