June 18, 2004 -- Five entries by a total of 14 Shaker Heights High School students finished in the top 10 in their respective divisions at the National History Day finals this week, and a fifteenth Shaker student won a special national prize for her exhibit.

Shaker sent an unprecedented nine entries to the national finals following an outstanding showing at the state competition. All together, 24 Shaker students qualified for the national finals, representing nearly half of the 53 qualifiers for the entire state of Ohio.

The following Shaker students were honored at the national competition for their interpretations of historical topics:

• Halle Bauer, Julia Shatten, Betsy Hogg and Rebecca Glazer, Outstanding State Exhibit for Ohio and Fourth Place, Senior Group Exhibit, A Murder of Justice.
• Caroline Smith and Emily Rosenberg, Eighth Place, Senior Group Exhibit, Carefully Wrought: The American Experience in the Musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein.
• Julia Sivertson, Danny Kanter, Jason Plautz and Jonathan Strassfeld, seventh place, Senior Group Documentary, The Chicago Conspiracy Trial.
• Alexandra Buder-Shapiro, Adam Margolius and Benjamin Wolpaw, Ninth Place, Senior Group Perormance, The Americanization of Judaism: Maintaining Religion in a Melting Pot.
• Makeda Farley, Fifth Place, Senior Individual Performance, Is This America? Fannie Lou Hamer's Encounters with Racism.
• Rebecca Heide, U. S. Marine Corps History Prize for her Senior Individual Exhibit, The Navajo Code Talkers and Their Role in the Pacific Conflict.

Other Shaker students competing at the national level were:

• Carter Wang, Hyunho Lee and Aaron Abelson, Senior Group Documentary, The Tiananmen Square Massacre: A Government's Encounter with its People.
• Charles Inniss, Rebekah Benish, Christopher Nau, Christopher Inniss and Tiffany Dunn, Senior Group Performance, Journey Toward Equality: A Look into the First Freedom Ride in the South.
• Alex Wang, Senior Individual Documentary, The Journey of Reconciliation: An Encounter with Jim Crow.

Founded in 1974, the National History Day program gives students the opportunity to produce dramatic performances, imaginative exhibits, multimedia documentaries and research papers related to an annual theme. State finalists have the opportunity to move on to the national competition on the campus of the University of Maryland. For more information, go to www.nationalhistoryday.org.

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