Harwood Union Middle School (HUMS) student Maisy Gendimenico received the Women's History Award for an exhibit titled “The Radium Girls” at Vermont Historical Society’s Vermont History Day at the University of Vermont on Saturday, April 8, while HUMS student Emily Hill won the Freedom and Unity Award for an exhibit titled “Athenian Democracy.”
HUMS’s Will Clark and Jane Schaefer took home first-place prizes, junior individual website prize for Clark’s project titled “Frontiers in History: The Manhattan Project” and first-place junior individual performance for Schaefer’s project “Sister Kenny Live and In Person.”
Harwood’s Tarin Askew took home second place in junior individual documentary for “Stonewall Riots.” Eireann McDonough received third-place individual performance for “Taylor Swift in History” and Jocelyn Brauer got third-place junior individual documentary for “Harvey Milk: Expanding Frontiers in Politics.”
More than 230 students in grades five-12 from throughout the state participated in Vermont History Day this year. Nineteen HUMS students competed in the event, for which “they chose a historical topic related to the contest theme “Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas.” Students chose a variety of topics that interested them,” HUMS teacher Korie Born wrote in an email. Students competed in one of five categories: documentary, exhibit, paper, performance, or website. Born accompanied the HUMS students to the event along with HUMS teachers Sarah Ibson, Jon Potts, and Nick Gordan.
Other HUMS competitors included Lily Adair with an exhibit titled “Pablo Picasso and the Great Cubism;” Emma Aither with an exhibit titled “The Life of Amelia Earhart;” Joc Bellanca with an exhibit titled “Anne Frank;” Nora Cosgrove with an exhibit titled “Frontiers in History: Pearl Harbor;” Caroline Cox with an exhibit titled “The Story of Irena Sendler, Savior of the Holocaust;” Harmony Devoe with a documentary titled “The Boom: How a Generation Crossed a Frontier;” Ben Goldhammer with an exhibit titled “Kate Warne: The First Female Detective;” Claire Nagurney with an exhibit titled “The AAGPBL: Frontier Women in Baseball;” Cali Neville with an exhibit titled “William Dorsey Swann: The Queen of Drag;” Cora Potts with an exhibit titled “The Rwandan Genocide;” Sydney Schaller with an exhibit titled “Marsha P. Johnson and the Stonewall Riots: A Frontier in Queer History;” and Rowan Sexton with an exhibit titled “Surrealism Art: Breakthroughs in Art History.”
According to an email from the Vermont Historical Society, “Students who place first or second in their category will be invited to participate in the annual National History Day competition alongside their peers from across the United States. This year’s NHD will take place between June 11-15, 2023, at the University of Maryland, College Park.”
“We are so proud of these young scholars,” Born wrote.
