Sarah Howells ’12, now a freshman at Princeton University, recently won first place in the Churchill Research Paper Competition sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Churchill Center. “The history department is delighted to congratulate Sarah on winning first prize in the Churchill Research Paper competition,” said Harker history department chair Donna Gilbert.

Howells is the contest’s first winner, and it’s not the only first that she has earned for the paper, titled “Winston Churchill’s Efforts to Unify Britain from 1940-1941.” It was also Howells’ submission to earn a grant from the Mitra Family Endowment, which was established last year by Harker parents Samir and Sundari Mitra (Shivani, grade 11). Howells went on to become the first Mitra Scholar for her entry.

“I was pretty surprised, since this being the first year of the competition I was not sure what the expectations were,” Howells said. “I would like to thank the Mitra family for supporting humanities research at Harker, Ms. [Donna] Gilbert, Dr. [Ruth] Meyer and Ms. [Susan] Smith for helping me with research and making the Harker history department a strong supporter of independent work, and Ms. [Julie] Wheeler for convincing me to apply for the grant in the first place.”