Eleven area students received awards at Saturday’s Tennessee History Day competition for making history come alive.
The event was held at the Legislative Plaza, the Tennessee State Museum and the Nashville Public Library, according to a Tennessee Historical Society news release. A panel of judges made up of university professors, graduate students, high school teachers, archivists and other public historians chose the winners from the 118 projects submitted.
All winners are eligible to represent the state at the National History Day competition in College Park, Md., June 13-17.
For the competition, students in grades six through 12 presented projects examining how innovations have changed history for this year’s theme of “Innovation and History: Impact and Change,” the release states. Projects were in various formats, including museum-style exhibits, research papers, Web sites, documentaries and live performances.
Local winners include:
* Dillan Edwards, a student at Mountain View Elementary in Etowah, won first place in the Junior Individual Exhibit category for his project on “The Jungle.”
* Robert Hernandez and Gary Moats, Polk County High School students, won first place in the Senior Website, Individual and Group Combined category for their project on “Lights, Camera, Action: The Impact of Television on Society.”
* Brandie McConkey, a student from Sequoyah High School in Monroe County, won second place in the Senior Individual Performance category for her project on “AC/DC: The Story of Tesla.” Her teacher is Lance McConkey.
* Vivian Hughbanks, a homeschool student from Signal Mountain, won third place in the Senior Individual Documentary category for her project on “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Ideas that Changed the World.”
* Caitlyn Sundkamp, a Walden homeschool student, won first place in the Senior Individual Exhibit category for her project on “A Matter of Time: John Harrison’s Sea Clocks.”
* Emma Grace Thompson, a homeschool student from Coker Creek, won the junior division in the Special Awards for Best Projects in Tennessee History category for her project on “Innovation Ends Isolation: The Effect of the Telephone on a Small Appalachian Community.” She also won first place in the Junior Individual Documentary category for the same project.
* Elisa Vandergriff, a homeschool student from Oak Ridge, won the junior division in the Society of Tennessee Archivists Awards for Archival Research category for her project on “Written: Sequoyah’s Invention of the Cherokee Syllabery.” She also won third place in the Junior Individual Paper category for the same project.
* Maranda Vandergriff and Lydia Talor, homeschool students from Oak Ridge, won the Sequoyah Award for best project portraying the American Indian History category for their project on “Talking Leaves: Innovation of the Written Language.”
* Michelle Woodruff, a McMinn Central High School student, won first place in the Senior Individual Performance category for her project on “Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement.”