Written by McD
National History Day
Bishop McDevitt Students Excel at National History Day Competition
Eight students from Bishop McDevitt High School advanced to the National History Day competition held at the University of Maryland from June 13-17, 2010. Collin McCarthy placed first in the nation in the Individual Documentary Senior Division with his entry entitled, “A Keystone Survey: Triangulating Social Investigation.” Collin was also awarded the History Channel’s Outstanding Entry Award, received $5,000, a medal, and was interviewed by a representative from the History Channel.
Bishop McDevitt students also won fourth place nationally in the Group Performance Senior Division with the entry entitled “We Interrupt This Broadcast: The Golden Age of the Radio.” The group consisted of Katherine DeLucy, Alessandro DiSanto, Laura Habich, Jillian Kinsey, and Rachel Miller. These students also received an Outstanding Entry Award for the State of Pennsylvania which is given to only one Junior Division entry and to one Senior Division entry from the entire commonwealth.
Jeaneatte Glusko and Sarah Allwein also participated in the national competition with their exhibit entitled “Iron Turns History.
To read the full press release, click on the "Read More" link below.
News Release
National History Day
Release: IMMEDIATE
Contact: Eric Mark
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Contact: Collin McCarthy
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Bishop McDevitt Student Takes the Gold at National History Day Contest
-- WASHINGTON -- June 17, 2010 -- Eight students from Bishop McDevitt High School advanced to the National History Day competition held at the University of Maryland from June 13-17, 2010. Collin McCarthy placed first in the nation in the Individual Documentary Senior Division with his entry entitled, “A Keystone Survey: Triangulating Social Investigation.” Collin was also awarded the History Channel’s Outstanding Entry Award, received $5,000, a medal, and was interviewed by a representative from the History Channel.
After months of intensive research and success at a series of district and state level competitions, Collin McCarthy, a recently graduated senior from Bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg, received the History Channel's Outstanding Entry Award and took first place in the National History Day program for his documentary on W.E.B. Du Bois' book, The Philadelphia Negro and his other early work in Sociology. Collin's entry on this year's theme of innovation in history, “A Keystone Survey: Triangulating Social Investigation,” was one of over half a million projects in five different categories that competed in a year-long competition that culminated in a national contest at College Park Maryland. There, the top two projects from each state, the District of Columbia, Guam, Shanghai, American Samoa, and Department of Defense Schools in Europe, were judged by professors, archivists, and other history professionals.
It was not a totally new experience for Collin, who has been doing History Day projects since he was a seventh grader at Holy Name of Jesus School. "History Day was a huge deal at Holy Name. The junior high kids always traveled around, presenting their projects to the lower grades, so we knew about History Day from the time we were in first grade. Father Mahoney was excited about everything that happened at Holy Name, but he was especially proud of NHD. Father's niece, Ms. Toni Mahoney, and Mr. Frank Kramer, my history teacher, encouraged a kind of excitement about National History Day that most schools reserve for sports." Collin also had a role model closer to home. His older brother, Kerry (another Bishop McDevitt graduate), consistently placed in the regional and state competitions, and brought back Holy Name's first national medal back in 1999.
For previous National History Day competitions, Collin has researched a progressive era newspaper editor, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Judge Michael Musmanno, Frederick Douglass, the Carlisle Indian School, and the photography of the Depression. Both the Indian School and Musmanno projects placed in the top ten at previous national competitions. "I like topics that are a little off the beaten path--something about a person or group that has been forgotten or not given their due, or a person who has fought for those people. This year's project is a perfect example. W.E. B. Du Bois is well known for his writings on African American culture and civil rights, but not many of us realize that he was, as they say in that WITF show, 'present at the beginning' when the research practices that social scientists use today to study urban and community problems were developed. At a time when a good portion of the United States took it for granted that African Americans and Native Americans were biologically inferior to Europeans, this young Black man with a PhD from Harvard wanted desperately to show that he was a representative of his race--not a fluke--and he believed in the power of facts to do it. He believed that if you could discover all the facts of a situation, you could understand and change it. If you presented those facts patiently and clearly, you could change people's minds, erase discrimination, and transform the way people see and understand the world. The Philadelphia Negro was his first step toward developing a comprehensive research model that pulled different kinds of information like census data, interviews, observation, historical analysis, and long-range study together. It sounds like simple common sense, and it really was, but at the time--over a 100 years ago at the turn of the twentieth century-- looking at social problems scientifically wasn't the norm. When Du Bois started to teach at Atlanta University, he oversaw studies of African American life that are still amazing reads today. He pretty much created what many now consider the first American School of Sociology and, according to Dr. Shaun Gabbidon of Penn State Harrisburg, was a trailblazer in Cimminology. You didn't see any of this in the history books until just recently because he was a Black man studying urban problems. Instead, we know Du Bois better as something of a firebrand activist. After years of being frustrated by how intractable racism and ignorance was, he did come to believe that you couldn't rely on facts alone to change the world: you need a little rabble rousing activism to get the facts out in front where people will actually pay attention to them. But I really think that the core of who he was can be glimpsed in his early work as a sociologist. He was a man of amazingly inquisitive intellect who believed that information could eventually change minds, a man who was willing to change his mind, not because he was a "flip-flopper" but because new facts led him to new conclusions. Sadly, I think that he might be just as frustrated today because facts still often take a back seat to ideology."
Collin's interest in Du Bois' practice of looking at a problem from different angles might have been influenced by his course load at Bishop McDevitt where he took Sociology and Psychology along with his History and English courses. "Mr. Eric Mark, my American History teacher, also taught my psychology class. How we looked at an issue of crime, for instance, varied depending on what class it was. In the end, you synthesize all the approaches to come up with an opinion. Mr. Mark also focused on using period documents to support a conclusion, and that is at the heart of what you do for National History Day."
Other Bishop McDevitt students also took home honors from the national contest. Juniors Katie DeLucy, Alessandro DiSanto, Laura Habich, Jillian Kinsey, and Rachel Miller came in fourth in the nation for their group performance on the innovation of radio, We Interrupt this Broadcast. They also received an Outstanding Entry Award for the State of Pennsylvania given to only one Junior Division entry and to one Senior Division entry from the entire Commonwealth. The group read documents, listened to newscasts of luminaries like Edward R. Murrow, and interviewed family and friends who remembered the days before television. They even took in a few of the original radio soap operas. Juniors Jeaneatte Glusko and Sarah Allwein also participated in the national competition with their exhibit entitled “Iron Turns History.”
Pennsylvania's History Day program is sponsored by the Army Heritage Center Foundation in Carlisle. Under the direction of Jeff Hawks, the AHCF's education Projects fall into one of five categories: historical papers, websites, documentaries, performances, and exhibits. The top two projects from each category represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at the national contest where $150,000 worth of scholarships were awarded and approximately 100 students took home cash prizes between $250 and $5,000 for superior work in a particular category.
Collin McCarthy - 1st Place - Senior Individual Documentary
Katie DeLucy, Alessandro DiSanto, Laura Habich, Jillian Kinsey, Rachel Miller (Not Pictured) - 4th Place - Senior Group Performance
