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IUP’s Regional Competition - FAQs:
What are the Dates?
For over thirty years, IUP has hosted the Regional Contest for Region 4 in Pennsylvania. Students and teachers are asked to register in January and early February so the judging schedule can be properly planned. Students need to submit their entries up to two weeks before the contest date for proper judging. This will give students enough time to develop their project before the competition and improve on it based on our judges' comments in time for the state competition, typically held in May.
What is the Cost?
Registration costs are $20 per student participating in the event. This will give them access to a 15/20 minute judging session of their entry, a lunch at IUP’s cafeteria, and a participation ribbon. Winners will also receive a medal and a gift.
How do I find out about the theme?
Every year, the contest has a different theme and it is crucical to understand the theme before starting your research. Not only will you be asked to explain your project's relationship to the theme, but your project, all on its own, should clearly show the relationship to the theme. You can find out this year's theme and explore it in more depth at https://nhd.org/theme
What forms do these entries take?
Students can choose from 5 different types of entries: Exhibits, Papers, Performances, Documentaries, and Websites. Papers have to be individually created while the other 4 categories can be either individual or group (up to 5 students) entries.
How many students can attend from a single school?
History Day allows 3 entries per category for each school. This means that, theoretically, each school could bring as many as 15 students for individual entries (3 students for each of the 5 different entry types) and up to 60 students for the group entries (of 5 students each) in the four categories that allow groups (Exhibits, Performances, Documentaries, and Websites).
In practice, it rarely works out to be that many participants since students prefer to work in smaller groups and/or avoid certain entry types.
Where can I register?
Registration begins in January with the sponsors registering first and then the students registering and linking their accounts to the teacher.
Where do the students go if they win?
The PA State History Day website has all the information on how to register for the State competition, should you win 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place at the regional contest.
What’s the timetable for all this?
Many students start their research in the Fall before the actual contest day. However, the typical course of action seems to be for students to hone in on a potential topic by Winter break with research kicking into high gear in January and the development of the project happening in February and some fine-tuning in March.
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For further Rules and Regulations, please refer to the NHD rule book
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https://www.nhd.org/rulebook
National History Day started as a small contest in Cleveland in 1974 and has grown to a nation-wide educational program that allows thousands of middle and high school students to participate in an exciting way to study history and learn about issues, ideas, people, and events. Through NHD students will learn the skills and techniques of the historian and discover new insights that they express through creative and original performances, documentaries, websites, papers, or three-dimensional exhibits. With its regional, state, and national levels of competition, it’s reasonable to see History Day being the Social Studies equivalent of what Science Fair is to the Natural Sciences.
Each year a broad theme is selected for the National History Day contest and students will present their findings at the Regional NHD contest here at IUP and will be judged by professional educators and historians. The top entries will move on to your state's NHD contest and, after that, the national contest at the University of Maryland at College Park in June.
As Regional History Day, Region 4, our district covers Armstrong, Indiana, Jefferson, Clearfield, Cambria, Elk, and parts of Westmoreland County. If yours school is located in these counties, please check out the information on this contest website and our national website, https://nhd.org . For further information on how to bring this great program to your school, please contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Werner D. Lippert, Ph.D.
NHD Regional Coordinator Region 4
lippert@iup.edu or via phone (724) 427-5577
Please watch for our "Last Minute Highlights" once registration has closed.
Judges will judge the entries based on the following criteria
60% Historical Quality
This is by far the most important factor in judging an entry. It refers to the research, analysis, and interpretation of the topic. The entry should be historically accurate. It should not simply recount facts but interpret and analyze them; that is, the entry should have a strong thesis or argument. In addition, it should place the topic into historical context—the intel- lectual, physical, social, and cultural setting. The entry should also reflect historical perspective–the causes and consequences of an event, for example, or the relationship of a local topic to larger events. The best entries will use a variety of both primary and secondary sources and will consider multiple viewpoints (e.g., those who suffered as well as those who benefited, males and females, people from different racial or ethnic or socioeconomic groups, as appropriate to the topic).
20% Relation to the Theme
The entry must clearly relate to the annual theme and demonstrate why the topic is significant in history. Do not confuse fame with significance. Local history topics may not be well known but may represent larger trends or events. The entry should draw conclusions about the topic’s significance. In other words, the entry should answer the questions, “So what? Why was this important?” It should not be just descriptive.
20% Clarity of Presentation
This relates to the entry’s production quality. You also should consider whether the written materials–the process paper and the bibliography–are clear, organized, and well done. The idea here is students achieve both superior production quality and superior historical quality.
