Sammamish students win top honors at National History Day Contest
Nine local Sammamish students won top honors, finalist awards, and a major scholarship at the National History Day (NHD) National Contest in mid-June.
Founded in 1974, NHD is a non-profit organization that engages more than half a million students globally each year in historical research projects. Projects are evaluated by historians and educators across five categories—documentary, exhibit, paper, performance and website.
Only 3,000 students qualified for this year’s nationals event, which ran from June 14 to 18 at the University of Maryland. To compete, students had to build original projects around the national theme, “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.”
To make it to the national level, the students had to rank top at the East Puget Sound Regional History Day contest and first or second Washington State History Day contest this past spring.
Ila Lu, a rising junior at Eastlake High, won first place nationally in the Senior Individual Website category. Her project was titled, “Don’t Hate the Media, Be the Media: Indymedia’s Revolution in Citizen Journalism.” This project dove into Indymedia, an online network created in 1999 that gave activists a platform to report events themselves.
Lu was also one of the four students nationwide to win a full-ride scholarship to the National History Academy, a 4-week residential summer program based in Middleburg, Virginia.
In the Senior Group Performance category, Eastlake seniors Vivian Gu and Sarah Lei, as well as Eastside Preparatory rising senior Kaylin Moon and Tesla STEM rising senior Akanksha Revuru, ranked second place nationally for their team project, “‘Bombard the Headquarters!’: Dazibao Propaganda’s Reaction in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.” This project examined how dazibao, large handwritten posters in Chinese characters, acted as a powerful form of propaganda in China during the 1960s.
This topic connected to the group’s background and made the experience meaningful.
“Dazibao, with its connection to me and my groupmates’ Asian backgrounds, as well as its perfect level of niche and complexity, was the perfect topic. Never force yourself into a topic you aren’t interested in,” said Gu.
Adya Kidambi, a rising sophomore at Eastlake, was named a national finalist in the Senior Individual Performance category. She also won the award for Outstanding Entry from Washington state for her project, “Prohibition – The Noble Experiment.” Her dramatic solo act focused on the 13-year period when the government banned alcohol nationwide.
For Kidambi, the performance was a way to look closely at history rather than just listing facts.
“When I started my project this year, I began to fall into the trap of summary, but the main point of NHD is to explain the why of what happened,” Kidambi said.
In the Senior Group Exhibit category, Eastlake rising seniors Arjun Pai, Arnav Kaja and Siddhant Jha were named finalists for their project, “Green Revolution: From Hunger to Harvest.” Their project explored the science and policy behind the Green Revolution, which transformed global agriculture to combat mass starvation.
The group picked the topic because it connected their interests in politics, science, and society. However, fitting their research onto the board was a challenge.
“We have a maximum of 500 words and that includes things like the thesis and conclusion. I had to really learn how to effectively synthesize and deliver new information,” Jha said.
This award came after years of hard work from this team. In previous years, they narrowly missed qualifying for the national contest, motivating the team to keep refining their work.
With the competition over, the students hope their success encourages others to start working on their projects early.
“This isn’t an assignment that you can complete the night before and expect to do well. It takes weeks if not months of work and iteration to make a project that will place and do well,” Pai said.
