National History Day
The Museum is a proud partner in the annual National History Day competition for Contra Costa County. Two cash prizes are awarded by the museum for student projects that are based on themes chosen by the museum. The county competition is based at St. Mary’s College and is held in February.
National History Day was started in the 1970s to encourage students to move past their textbooks and dive deep into doing history based on a theme that changes each year. Students can choose to do their projects as a documentary, live performance, three dimensional exhibit, they can design a website, or write a paper. The county competition is divided into a senior division (high school), junior division (middle school) , and includes an elementary poster division. Each project is rigorously reviewed by judges. Winners move on to the State competition in April and those winners compete at the national competition held at the University of Maryland in June.
The museum is proud to be a sponsor of the county competition and in encouraging students to use the skills of history scholars to investigate and report on historic topics of their choosing.