Chapel Hill conductor and composer Benjamin Keaton has been selected to receive Opera America's most prestigious award, the Trustee Award, for 2010.

Opera America is the international service organization for over 200 professional companies in the U.S. and Canada, and its Trustee Award is given for a significant and exceptional service to the world of opera over a sustained period of time.

Keaton was recognized for his financial and artistic support of the company he co-founded 12 years ago, Long Leaf Opera. The company produces only fully staged works written originally in English. Keaton was cited for his sustaining guidance for over 50 new productions in the Triangle area during that period, with over a dozen regional or world premiers.

Keaton was also recognized for his insistence on cultural diversity and for his strong encouragement of living composers. This past summer, he brought 10 composers to the area for national premiers of their work.

Long Leaf Opera is based in Chapel Hill and presents works in a number of venues in Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. It also conducts an outreach opera series in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro public school system.

Naman Shah, a student in the UNC School of Medicine, has been awarded a 2010 fellowship by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.

Shah is one of 30 young scholars granted the fellowships, which support the graduate studies of immigrants and children of immigrants. The two-year awards provide cash grants of up to $50,000 and tuition support of up to $40,000.

He is a third-year MD/Ph.D. candidate in UNC School of Medicine's Medical Scientist Training Program. He received a Bachelor of Public Health degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, graduating from the department of environmental sciences and engineering with highest honors and distinction in public service. He was a North Carolina Leadership Fellow and an IBM Watson scholar as an undergraduate.

Karen D. Barwick, D.D.S., P.A., of Carrboro will open the Dental Assistants Training Centers in April in her Graham office.

The school will turn out Dental Assistants I in a 12-week program that meets on Saturdays. The field of dental assisting, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is experiencing growth expected to reach nearly 30 percent by 2016. In North Carolina, jobs are predicted to rise 53 percent.

The curriculum of DATC was designed with a mix of class room and hands-on lab work within Barwick's state-of-the-art office. Students completing the program will meet the North Carolina State Board requirements for radiology, dental emergencies, infection control, and receive certification in Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation.

Martha Jenkins of Chapel Hill, third vice president of the National Federation of Republican Women, joined more than 200 other Republican women leaders from across the nation in passing a resolution rejecting government-run healthcare and calling for market-oriented reform solutions at its spring board of directors meeting in Oklahoma City.

Jenkins is regional director for the states of Kentucky,Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan.

John B. Buse, M.D., Ph.D., has been selected to receive a Clinical Excellence award at the Castle Connolly National Physician of the Year Awards ceremony.

Buse is a professor in the UNC School of Medicine, chief of the division of endocrinology and metabolism and director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center. He also serves on the steering committee for the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute -- the academic home of the NIH Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards at UNC -- where Buse is a PI extender in Clinical Research. He is also an active clinician who treats patients both at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill and at the Highgate Specialty Center in Durham.

Alden Rose, daughter of Donald and Donya Rose of Chapel Hill, has been named to the Honors List at St. Andrew's-Sewanee School for the most recent grading period.

In addition to being an outstanding student, Alden, a senior boarding student, is a member of the cross country team and yearbook staff.