Kentucky Well-Represented at National History Day
College Park, MD, (June 15, 2023) - Forty-nine Kentucky students recently competed in the National History Day® Contest in College Park, MD, June 10–15. The 2023 contest theme was Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas. These Kentucky students joined more than half a million globally who completed projects in one of five categories: documentary, exhibit, paper, performance, or website.
After completing a project, students compete in a series of contests beginning at the local level. The top students from all 50 states, Washington D.C., U.S. territories, and international schools are invited to compete in the National Contest.
“Nearly half a million students competed in National History Day this year at the local and affiliate levels, so to make it to the National Contest is a remarkable achievement,” said NHD Executive Director Dr. Cathy Gorn. “These students spent months researching primary and secondary sources, analyzing their topic’s significance in history, and communicating their ideas in creative formats, and they were guided by gifted history teachers. The academic success of these students is the answer to the dismal results of the National Assessment of Education Progress report on history and civics that was released in May.”
More than 400 historians and education professionals served as judges for the students’ work. $150,000 in scholarships were awarded at the national awards ceremony, and more than 100 students took home cash prizes between $250 and $1,000 for superior work in a particular category of judging.
Kentucky students brought home the following awards:
Outstanding Affiliate Winners
Junior Division: Sharon Zheng and McKeyla Nguyen, Junior Group Website, Profit or People: The Rise of Tamper-Evident Packaging, St. Nicholas Academy, Louisville, KY
Senior Division: Kaitlyn Nelson, Ivy Litton, and Ava Blackledge, Senior Group Performance, That’s the Way It Is: Competition, Conflict, and the Space Race, Rowan County Senior High School, Morehead, KY
The Outstanding Affiliate Winners’ projects were in the top 10 in their respective categories.
Special Prize Winner
World War II History Prize (Sponsored by the National World War II Museum)
Grace Yi, Lafayette High School, Lexington, KY, Senior Individual Documentary: Chinese American War Reactions: A Frontier of Perceptions
About National History Day® (NHD): NHD is a non-profit organization based in College Park, Maryland, which seeks to improve the teaching and learning of history. The National History Day Contest was established in 1974 and currently engages more than half a million students every year in conducting original research on historical topics of interest. Students present their research as a documentary, exhibit, paper, performance, or website. Projects compete first at the local and affiliate levels, where the top entries are invited to the National Contest at the University of Maryland at College Park. NHD is sponsored in part by National Endowment for the Humanities, World Education Foundation, Patricia Behring Foundation, 400 Years of African American History Commission, History Channel, Pritzker Military Foundation, The Better Angels Society, National Park Service, Dr. Scholl Foundation, History NET, Doughboy Foundation, Tom Lauer, Skehan Communications. For more information, visit nhd.org.
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