Three Fairview High School students grew fascinated with the protest art of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War — the designs, illustrations and other artistic graffiti — after studying the subject in class.
Students Emma Taylor, Natasha Uzdensky and Leah Jeong found out recently that others around the United States also were interested in the topic. They took home a first place award for their work at this year’s National History Day competition held at the University of Maryland from June 9 to 13. The competition is an annual event to highlight student projects regarding several topics in history.
“We’re all pretty interested in art history and social movements and social change,” Uzdensky said. “We thought that this topic was a good medium point between those ideas.”
Choosing to research connections between the graffiti on the Berlin Wall and the birth of protest art, the group of incoming high school juniors did research together, browsed through art archives and shuffled through newspaper clippings.
“We already knew about historical analysis to an extent. But doing the project put it into a new perspective, because we were able to synthesize a lot of arguments that professional scholars had. but also create our own line of narrative that was unique,” Uzdensky said.
Once the students traveled to the event, they also met with U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, traded pins with people from different states in an intense game and slept in a college dorm for the first time with the other contestants.
Other students from the Boulder area at the competition took advantage of the directives encouraging students to explore subjects relating to their interests or personal lives. Fairview High School rising freshman Mina Berger chose to do a project on someone she found personally interesting for a reason.
“I created a project on Marion Downs, an esteemed pediatric audiologist from the 1960s,” Berger said. “This topic is very personal to me because I have unilateral hearing loss, and Marion Downs is a local topic, having completed all of her work at the University of Denver.”
Berger and her groupmates Sophia Dunn and Jessie Yan won an Outstanding Junior Entry award as well as a World War ll History Prize for the state of Colorado.
“I believe that the National History Day competition is about teaching children the skills necessary to complete a year-long project at a collegiate level, ensuring that competitors develop time management, advanced writing and research skills,” Berger said.
This year’s theme was “Turning Points In History.” Students were asked to create a documentary, a performance, an exhibit, a paper, or a website demonstrating analysis of the topic. After going through local and statewide competitions, those who advanced to the national competition were judged by a national board.
Colorado students have been recognized in the awards in previous years as well. This year, students from Southern Hills Middle School, Summit Middle School and Fairview High School attended the competition.
Contest organizers already have released the 2025 theme and guidelines for students. For more information on National History Day, visit nhd.org/en/contest/national-contest/.
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