Three Mead projects advance to National History Day Competition

Six Mead Junior High School students have qualified for the National History Day competition June 9-13 in College Park, Maryland.

• Abhay Paidipalli, Soham Gupta and Sean Yang qualified in the Exhibit category for their project "Breaking Barriers in Basketball: The 1963 Loyola 'Game of Change.'"

• Anirudh Chari and Akhilraj Chennamadhavuni qualified in the Documentary category for their project "The Chicago Typhoid Fever Epidemic of the 19th Century: How Sickness and Death Can Lead to Change."

• Ella Saputra qualified in the Website category for her project "The Radium Girls: Ottawa's Shining Women."

The following four projects by Mead students also earned Superior Ranking at the State History Expo.

• Anisha Agarwal, Brisa Baldwin, and Maya Jha for their exhibit "The Tylenol Murders: How Seven Deaths Changed America's Medicine Safety Forever"

• Dhruv Patel, Yashas Mattur and Krish Mewade for their exhibit "Instigating A Racial Movement: The Springfield Race Riots of 1908"

• Anmay Gupta for his documentary "The Sears Tower: A Monument for a Dying Company"

• Shivshankar Prasad and Sreedevi Prasad for their documentary "The 1968 Democratic National Convention Riots: The Power of Protest"

The theme this year was Triumph and Tragedy in History. Students choose a historical topic related to the theme, conduct research, analyze and interpret their sources, and then draw a conclusion about the significance of their topic. Students can present their work as a research paper, an exhibit, a performance, a documentary or a website.