Media Advisory: National History Day 2015
Thousands of students from around the world will compete in a core humanities discipline, history, at the National History Day Competition in College Park, MD
National History Day
Thousands of students from around the world will be in College Park, Md, engaging in a core humanities discipline, history, by competing in the National History Day Competition for a chance to take home the top prize in their respective categories.
What: Thousands of promising young historians (middle and high school students) to compete in the 2015 National History Day competition. This event will mark the end of a year-long academic competition, where they will be competing with the top students from each state for a chance to place first and take home a prize in their categories. NEH Chairman William D. Adams will award several prizes to top winners.
When: Monday June 14 through –Thursday June 18 (full schedule attached)
Where: College Park, Maryland
Background: National History Day is a national year-long academic program that engages 6th to 12th grade students in historical research. Each year, more than half a million students choose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research to prepare original papers, websites, exhibits, performances, and documentaries for entry into local, state, and national History Day competitions. NEH grants were instrumental in helping National History Day grow from a pilot start-up project in 1974 into a national program that now operates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and in international schools in China, Korea and South Asia. NEH holds a Congressional breakfast, and sponsors sixteen National History Day awards for first place submissions across several categories, as well as a special Chronicling America prize for the best use of the NEH- and Library of Congress-supported Chronicling America historic newspaper database in a student project. During the first teacher workshop during the competition there will be an NEH led seminar about using Chronicling America. In January, five NEH grantees presented “Ask the NEH Expert” Google Hangouts, providing insights on writing and interpreting history and researching and producing websites, exhibitions, research papers, performances, and documentaries, using their NEH-funded projects as examples.
Follow the event on social media at @nehgov and @nationalhistory and be sure to congratulate National History Day students through the hashtag: #NHD2015
For media inquiries please contact: Theola DeBose at 202-579-9385 (cell) or @email