Howard County Regional History Day Winners Move on to State Level Competition

March 22nd, 2018

The Howard County Public School System recently hosted its 14th annual History Day Competition at Reservoir High School. After months of researching, 282 students in Grades 6–12 presented on topics that relate to this year’s National History Day theme of “Conflict & Compromise in History.”

Students presented entries in five categories: exhibit, performance, multimedia documentary, research paper and website. This year’s event included 188 project entries presented by 282 students from 21 middle schools and 7 high schools.

Central Office staff, Board of Education members, elected officials, business partners, community members and over 85 teachers volunteered to judge to evaluate student entries. The top two entries in each category from the Howard County regional contest advance to the state contest on April 28 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The National History Day competition will be held June 10–14 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Elkridge Landing Middle School student Aishat Adedoyin won the junior category of the African American Experience Award, sponsored by the Council of Elders of the Black Community of Howard County, for “The Black Panther Party,” while Reservoir High School students Eniola Ayo-Gbenjo and Nyla Harding won the senior category for “The Conflict and Compromise of Curls and Coils.”

Wilde Lake Middle School student Lily Coombs won the Local History Award sponsored by the Howard County History Society for “The New America: Columbia.”

“The Stonewall Riots,” by Patuxent Valley Middle School student Olivia Davis, won the LGBT Experience Award sponsored by PFLAG of Howard County.

Richard Malt of Marriotts Ridge High School was named the 2018 Howard County History Day Teacher of the Year.

In the Senior Individual Exhibits category, Sierra Burns from Howard High School won first place for “AC vs. DC: The Conflict That Sparked an Electrical Compromise That Still Stands Today.” Sarah Griffith, also from Howard, took second place with “Hamilton versus Burr: A Fatal Affair of Honor.”

Howard High School students Thomas Griffith and Victoria McArthur won first place in the Senior Group Exhibits category with “Ford and Ferrari: The Greatest Rivalry.” In second place was Reservoir High School students Alyssa Lee and Disha Sanwal for “A Compromise of Slavery and Racial Division: Jim Crow Laws.”

“Parental Advisory: Explicit Content: Conflict and Compromise Over Explicit Music,” by Howard High School student Sam Seliger, won first place in the Senior Individual Documentaries category, with second place going to “On the Front Lines of Faith: Chaplains’ Reconciliation of Conflicting Roles in the Vietnam War” by Jake Blum of Howard High School.

In the Senior Group Documentaries category, first place went to “Illuminated: The Radium Girls” by Ece Fisgin and Christine Kim from River Hill High School. “The Treaty of Versailles: The Post-War Compromise that Prompted Years of Conflict” by Simran Behera and Joshua Drasin of Long Reach High School won second place.

Marriotts Ridge High School’s Anirudh Saxena took first place in the Senior Individual Performances category with “Stubbing Out the Cigarette: The Evolution of America’s View on Smoking.” Second place went to Howard High School’s Lauren Brown for “Anna Wintour: Making the Modern American Woman.”

The Senior Group Performances category was won by Hannah Chan, Phoebe Chan and Erik Mechtal of River Hill High School with their “The North Carolina Eugenics Board.”

“Lessons from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Cold War,” by Alexandra Lorincz of Marriotts Ridge High School, won the Senior Papers category. “The First Opium War,” by Long Reach High School’s Adam Yang, took second.

In the Senior Individual Websites category, Marriotts Ridge High School student Virginia Wang won first place with “Executive Order 9066: The Unconstitutional Injustice of Japanese Americans.” In second was Reservoir High School’s Nishtha Gupta with “The Iran Hostage Crisis: The Breaking Point in US-Iran Relations.”

Yari Armand, Trivikram Battalapalli, and David Inko-Tariah from Reservoir High School took first place in the Senior Group Websites category with “The Biafran War: A Conflict of the Ages.” Second place went to “Conflict Over Water: The Colorado River Compact,” by Helen Fleming and Esha Gupta of Reservoir High School.

First place in the Junior Individual Exhibits category went to “Creating Conflict Through Compromise: The Sykes-Picot Agreement,” by Elkridge Landing Middle School’s Jack Chalupa. Anjali Vidyasagar from Mayfield Woods Middle School took second with “The Nullification Crisis: Precursor to the Civil War.”

The winner of first place in the Junior Group Exhibits category was “A Divided Nation: Vietnam’s Struggle for Unity,” by Amrutha Alibilli and Shriya Sane from Dunloggin Middle School. Second place was won by “MacArthur vs. Truman: Preventing a Third World War,” by Faith Comising, Benjamin Lee, and Michelle Rhee of Lime Kiln Middle School.

“Madeleine Justus: Conflict and Compromise During the Holocaust,” by Quinn Hancock of Burleigh Manor Middle School, won first place in the Junior Individual Documentaries category. “The Conflict of Japanese Internment & the Insufficient Compromise to Internees” by Nithhya Nuvvala from Bonnie Branch Middle School won second.

Lime Kiln Middle School students Aiai Calmer, Katelyn Herberholz, and Oriel Ockerman’s ““Mother” to Miners, “Hellraiser” and Compromiser: Mary Harris Jones” took first place in the Junior Group Documentaries category. Jenna Kreh and Ella Reinders, of Patuxent Valley Middle School, took second place with “Compromising for Conflict: The Three-Fifths Compromise.”

In the Junior Individual Performances category, Mayfield Woods Middle School’s Sofia Scherer won first with “WWII: An Unlikely Catalyst for Women’s Rights.” Second place went to “Pauline Cushman: Becoming a “Traitor” to Unite a Country in Conflict” by Hannah Haber from Patuxent Valley Middle School.

Haania Ahmed, Lydia Jensen, Casey Moquin, Ramin Patwary, and Shifa Shaikh from Patuxent Valley Middle School won the Junior Group Performances category with “Sir Wyatt’s Rebellion.” Clarksville Middle School’s Chloe Hoffmeister and Bella Rovansek took second with “The Damming of Hetch Hetchy.”

“The Kashmir Conflict: Decades of Failed Compromises” by Mayfield Woods Middle School’s Sharvari Tirodkar won the Junior Papers category, with “Arab-Israeli Conflict: Raging Wars, Unsuccessful Compromises, and the Rise of International Terrorism,” by Noah Hoffman from Patuxent Valley Middle School, winning second place.

Luci Denmeade from Bonnie Branch Middle School won first place in the Junior Individual Websites category with “The Failed Compromise Towards the Lakota Nation in the Black Hills.” “The One-Child Policy in China” by Emma Moser from Murray Hill Middle School took second.

In the Junior Group Websites category, first place went to Annelise Ingham, Malia Keller, and Hannah Lowry from Dunloggin Middle School and their “Randall Forsberg’s Nuclear Freeze Movement from 1980–1990.” Second place went to “The Colorado River Compact: Historical Lessons for Water Rights Management” by Abihith Velumuri and Colin Wang of Burleigh Manor Middle School.