Howard County Students Make Regional History Day Competition

March 23rd, 2015

The Howard County Public School System hosted its eleventh annual History Day Competition on Saturday, March 14, 2015 at Reservoir High School. After months of researching, over 240 students Grades 6–12 presented on topics that relate to this year’s National History Day theme of “Leadership and Legacy in History.”

Students presented entries in five categories: exhibit, performance, multimedia documentary, research paper, and website. This year’s event included 179 project entries presented by 243 students from 18 middle schools and 7 high schools.

Over 65 teachers and staff, Board of Education members, college interns, business partners, and community members volunteered to judge student entries. The top two entries in each category from the Howard County regional contest advance to the state contest on May 2, 2015, at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In the senior division, Lauren Shen of Marriotts Ridge High School won first place in the individual exhibits for “Kingdom of Steel: Andrew Carnegie.” Mary Kate Sisk of Reservoir High School took second with “Joshua L. Chamberlain: A Civil War Hero.”

Jaimie Devlin and Erin Richardson from Reservoir High School took first in the group exhibits with “Eleanor Roosevelt: Determined to Make a Change.” Second place went to Haley Murray and Nadia Zeleski, also from Reservoir High School, for their “Alfred Hitchcock: An Introduction to Cinematography.”

First place for individual documentaries went to Matthew Blum of Howard High School for “Smallpox Eradication: The End of a Disease and the Beginning of a New Era in Public Health.” Molly Bingham of Marriotts Ridge High School was second with “William Wilburforce: A Force for Change.”

The group documentaries category was won by Alan Gorny and Srinayan Nuvvala from Howard High School for their documentary, “Alan Turing Leadership & Legacy: Father of Computing.” Hunter Little, Josh Krutz, and Abby Wang of Reservoir High School took second with “George Washington: More than Just a Guy in a Wig.”

For individual performances, Nikhil Mehta of Marriotts Ridge High School won first place for “Liberator, Reformer, Dictator, Tyrant: Fidel Castro’s Leadership and Legacy in History.” Odette Yang from Marriotts Ridge High School won second place for “Give Peace a Chance: John Lennon and the Anti-War Movement.”

In the group performances, first place was awarded to Divya Kalluri and Megan Rabe at River Hill High School for “Dorothea Dix: A Voice for the Mad and the Catalyst for Mental Health Reform.” Second place went to Zion Hadley and Megha Sharma from Long Reach High School for “Harriet Tubman.”

Katie Gao from Centennial High School won first place in the papers category for “Henry Dunant’s Leadership and Legacy: Pioneering the International Red Cross and Humanitarian Aid.”
Cecilia Hsu, also from Centennial High School, took second with “Eastman Kodak: Establishing the Camera as the American Documenter.”

The individual web page category was won by Olivia Sharon of Long Reach High School for her
“Mikhail Gorbachev’s Policies of Glasnost and Perestroika Weakened the Ability of the Soviet State to Maintain Control of Its Subject Peoples, Leading to the End of the Soviet Union.” Chris Phung of River Hill High School came in second for “The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: A Thaw in the Cold War.”

First place in the group web page category went to “Leading the Way: Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps,” by Christina Barrett and Annabel Winters-McCabe from Reservoir High School.

In the junior division, Sakina Marvi of Mayfield Woods Middle School won the individual exhibit category for “The Architectural Accomplishments of Frank Lloyd Wright.” Rebecca Li of Lime Kiln Middle School won second for “Clara Barton: A Life of Service from the Battlefield to an Inspiration.”

Tyler Prevost, Griffin Shirodkar, and Lance Weiner from Bonnie Branch Middle School won first place for their group exhibit, “Jackie Robinson: A Life of Firsts.” Kelsey Crane and Sara Elchynski, also from Bonnie Branch Middle School, won second in the category for “Nelson Mandela: Leading the Way Against Apartheid.”

The individual performance category was won by Rakshita Balaji from Mayfield Woods Middle School for “The Leadership and Legacy of America’s National Anthem and Flag.” Sriya Potluri of Clarksville Middle School took second place with “Deinstitutionalization.”

First place in the group performance category went to Christina Cha, Gabrielle Chery, Amilee Huang, and Inayat Jain from Burleigh Manor Middle School for “Julia Child: A Legacy of Gastronomy and French Cuisine.” Lauren Brown and Samantha Mammel of Ellicott Mills Middle School got second with “Clara Barton: Angel of the Battlefield.”

In the papers category, “R. Adams Cowley: The Golden Hour,” by Jeremy Jablonover of
Clarksville Middle School won first place. “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Leadership and Legacy: Gateway to Social Change,” by Molly Oppenheim from Patuxent Valley Middle School took second place.

Yamini Ananth from Clarksville Middle School won first place in the individual web page category for “William Jennings Bryan: A Catalyst for the Creationist Movement.” Second place went to Hannah Gorel from Thomas Viaduct Middle School for “Fighting for Their Rights: The Women’s Suffrage Movement.”

Ellicott Mills Middle School’s Armaan Bhasin and Karan Dalal won the group web page category with “Thurgood Marshall: Leading the Nation to Desegregation.” Chinthan Prasad, Rohit Priyakumar, Paul Rajapandi, and Ronan Sardesai, also from Ellicott Mills Middle School, won second place for “Steve Jobs: The Appleseed of Innovation.”

There was a tie for first place in the individual documentary category. Esha Ponnuri and Maddie Wirebach, both from Dunloggin Middle School, won for “Alexander Fleming, the Savior” and “Clara Barton” respectively. Kaitlyn Carino of Mayfield Woods Middle School won second place with “The Leadership and Legacy of Bea Gaddy.”

In the group documentaries category, first place went to “No Smoke without Fire: How Luther Terry’s Report Revealed the Dangers of Cigarette Smoking to Americans,” by Malena Blakenship, Priya Kanneboyina, and Helen Struble from Lime Kiln Middle School. Second place went to “The Young Turks: Leading the Extermination of Millions,” by Kieran Davis, Riya Gupta, and Jamie Tsao of Ellicott Mills Middle School.

To learn more about the Howard County Regional History Day Competition, visit: http://www.hcpss.org/news-posts/2015/03/2014-15-162.