From left, Brent Collom, Thomas Chadwick, Christine Mathew, Logan Black, Ashley Miller, Abby Beus, Kyler Parkinson and Brooklyn Scott. Not pictured: Miriam Wallstrom. Courtesy photo

LAPS News:

On March 9, eight Los Alamos High School students from the National History Day Club entered their projects into the National History Day (NHD) Regional competition, and all placed either first or second, which means all eight will advance to the state competition in April.

National History Day is an annual competition that over half a million students participate in nationwide. Each year’s projects are developed around a theme, such as “Conflict and Compromise” or “Taking a Stand.” Students choose any event in history relating to the theme and then present their project in a creative way via websites, papers, films, exhibits, or performances.

There are three rounds of competition — regionals, state, and nationals — in which students display their projects to a panel of judges and defend their research in a fifteen minute interview. Placing at regionals or state advances the project to the next round of competition, and the top two entries in every category at the state level are then invited to the national contest. The 2018 NHD national finals will be held June 10-14 at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The winning projects and their creators are as follows: Logan Black and Ashley Miller created a performance on the Peloponnesian War, Kyler Parkinson and Abby Beus competed with their website on the Korean War, Thomas Chadwick created a website on Reconstruction, Christine Mathew and Brooklyn Scott made a documentary film on the annexation of Hawaii, and Miriam Wallstrom wrote a paper on the Cuban Missile Crisis.  

All of the students and their independently researched history projects will advance to the state level competition April 27 in Albuquerque.