Severna Park Students Win Awards At Maryland History Day

In May, over 500 middle and high school students showcased their original documentary film, exhibit, performance, research paper, or website—representing a year’s worth of historical research—in hope of receiving an award. They competed in the Maryland History Day State Contest, held at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

A trio of Severna Park High School students — Nora Devine, Jordan Fain, and Samantha Lavallee — received the Morrison Award for Excellence in STEM Education and Innovation for their performance on Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and microbiology.

Lavallee said her group picked the topic because they did not want to focus only on history, so she recommended science to the other members.

“I wanted to do something in science as my grandmother, Connie Lavallee, was a biology teacher at St. John the Evangelist School right here in Severna Park for many years,” Lavallee said. “We decided to find a biologist who shaped science as we know it today. After many Britannica searches, we found the Dutch microbiologist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.”

Devine said, “Through this project we discovered his many amazing, yet underrated, scientific discoveries. Our project took on a biographical approach, aiming to help tell his story! I plan on pursuing a STEM-related career in the future, and this project exposed me to a new topic I had never considered.”

Fain was also easy to convince, since she has always been interested in STEM activities.

“When I was a kid, I would always build different things from recycled materials and do puzzles related to math,” she said. “As for microbiology, I love science class and being able to learn how the world works. For this project, I was curious how people came to their conclusions about how humans and animals were created and what got them thinking about this. By researching Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, I got to figure out the answers to some of these questions.”

The contest is the culmination of a year-long program from Maryland Humanities. Last year, more than 27,000 Maryland students participated at the school level.

Maryland History Day, produced by Maryland Humanities since 1999, sparks critical thinking and helps develop skills in research and analysis, writing, and public speaking. Working solo or in small groups, students create a project exploring a historical topic of their choice on an annual theme. This year’s theme was “Turning Points in History.”

Fain said the Severna Park group’s biggest challenge was finding credible resources to provide information since the topic focused on events in the 1600s and 1700s.

“In addition, I have stage fright, so doing a play in front of judges would never have been something that I imagined that I would do,” she admitted. “But, in the end it was so rewarding because I got to experience something with some of my best friends and feel the sense of pride of putting together a project from scratch and being able to perform it for others so that their questions about the first unit of life could be answered. Just in general, being able to share our love for science and the fun that we had was a special moment.”

Students from 12 counties and Baltimore City received special awards, designated for outstanding Maryland History Day projects that cover specific subjects.

Lavallee was especially excited to win the award because she wants to pursue a career in biology and medicine.

“I was so happy to have won this award because I knew that there were many projects in the running for it,” she said. “It also proved that all our hours researching and planning out the performance in each other's living rooms really paid off.”