National History Day

This past weekend, 14 of our ninth graders (and one eighth grader) participated in the annual Sacramento County History Day competition. Sacramento County History Day is part of National History Day, which is an international research competition in which half a million students participate each year. Students pick and research a topic based on a different theme (this year's theme was "Frontiers in History"), and then create research projects in different formats such as a documentary, website, paper, or exhibit. Students have been working on their projects since Fall and have conducted hours upon hours of research.

Several SCDS students earned medals, runner-up nods, and special recognition awards at this year's competition and we send out congratulations to all of them! 

Winners:

Senior Group Documentary

• Champion: Rehan Afzal and Gavin Wang (project title: "Victory on Two Fronts: The Tuskegee Airmen's Fight Against Racism and Facism")
• Runner-up: Jaq Howes, Sanjay Brink, and Jackson Burton ("The Frontier of Electrical Computing")

Senior Individual Documentary

• Champion: Ava Levermore ("Katherine Dunham: Expanding the Frontiers of Dance")
• Champion: Ashly Omalu ("The Autopsy That Changed The World")

Senior Individual Exhibit

• Champion: Zema Nasirov ("The Minds Behind the Blue Baby Operation")
• Champion: Grace Mahan ("Doctor-Assisted Suicide: Right to Die?")

Senior Individual Website

• Champion: Rebecca Lin ("The Development of Stem Cells: From Then to Now and Later")
• Champion: Maddie Inman ("Vaccines and the Fight for Immunity")
• Runner-up: Andrew Logan ("The Manhattan Project: From Beginning to End")

Special recognition awards

Black History Award

• Ava Levermore

East Lawn Memorial Park Award  & 

SSVMS Medical History Award

• Ashly Omalu

Medical History Award

• Rebecca Lin

Junior Individual Exhibit

• Runner-up: Sophia Lee ("The Polio Vaccine: The Race Against Time")