National History Day is not just a day, but every day! The National History Day program is a year-long education program that culminates in a national contest every June.  National History Day: Nebraska is sponsored by Humanities Nebraska and Nebraska Wesleyan University.

For more than twenty-five years the National History Day program has promoted systemic educational reform related to the teaching and learning of history in America’s schools. The combination of creativity and scholarship built into the NHD program anticipated current educational reforms, making National History Day a leading model of performance-based learning.

NHD is a year-long education program that engages students in grades 6-12 in the process of discovery and interpretation of historical topics. Students produce dramatic performances, imaginative exhibits, multimedia documentaries, interactive web sites, and research papers based on research related to an annual theme. These projects are then evaluated at local, state, and national competitions.

2023 Contest Theme

Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas

During the 2022–2023 school year, National History
Day®
(NHD) invites students to research topics related
to the theme, Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas.
This theme is broad enough in scope to encourage the
investigation of topics ranging from local to global history.
To understand the historical importance of their topics,
students must ask questions of time and place, cause and
effect, change over time, and impact and significance.
What factors contributed to the development of a frontier?
Why did it emerge, and how did it change? When did it
cease to be a frontier? What impact did it have on the
people who experienced it, and how did they affect it?
Regardless of the topic selected, students must present
a description of it and draw conclusions about how their
topic affected individuals, communities, nations, or the
world, changing the course of human society. 

The Nebraska State Contest will be held online April 21, 2023.

In 2022, National History Day Nebraska involved...

History Day Students W Sasse
Senator Ben Sasse (center) with National History Day: Nebraska contestants Lauren Colins and Grace Sorenson of Chadron High School

National History Day: Nebraska was made available to Nebraska students with the help of: