STEM in National History Day

I was interested in which National History Day themes tended to generate STEM-related or arts-related projects. I had access to the full lists of national contest entries from 2016-2018 and the lists of finalists from 2011 to 2018. This post focuses on STEM-related projects.

The number of STEM projects at the national contest and in finals varies significantly from year to year, and it seems very tied to the topic. Topics that focus on the impact of a person or event (such as "Turning Points" or "Revolution, Reaction, Reform") lend themselves to STEM topics. The most common fields for STEM projects across years are medicine, environment, and disease, with space, nuclear, and other biology topics also common. This might be because of accessible resources on those topics or earlier exposure of students to them. No NHD category consistently has the most STEM projects, but performance often has the least.

Below the fold are more details on what I found. There are some notes/disclaimers about this analysis and how I categorized projects at the end.


2016-2018

2016, with the theme "Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange in History," had an enormous number of STEM projects. More than 27% of all national contest projects had STEM topics. Websites had by far the most, with nearly 37% percent of website topics related to STEM. Performances were by far the lowest, at about 14%.

2017, with the theme "Taking a Stand," showed a steep drop-off in STEM projects from the year before. 14% of all national contest projects had STEM topics. They were most prevalent in the paper category, with was 18% STEM, and least prevalent in the documentary category, which was about 12% STEM. The most STEM-y category from the year before, website, was down to 15% STEM topics. The performance percentage only dropped to about 12%; this was the least dramatic drop.

2018's theme was "Conflict and Compromise," and the percentage in STEM projects decreased to 12% of the national contest entries. All categories were between 9 and 14 percent STEM projects, with the highest percentage in documentary (14%) and the lowest in performance (not quite 10%).

There were 468 total STEM related projects in 2016. The broad category within STEM that appeared the most was Space with 95 projects. Next was Disease with 76. Third was Biology with 45 projects. (Note that I have separated Biology, Disease, and Medicine as much as possible.) That's about 47% of the STEM projects just across those three categories. Nuclear weapons were the single most common STEM topic. (Projects listed as being about nuclear weapons included projects about the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge, the A bomb, nuclear fission, Oppenheimer, the Trinity Test, and the Pacific Test.) There were 19 of these. The other topics with at least 10 associated projects were about Apollo 11 (or Armstrong or Glenn), Polio (including Jonas Salk and March of the Dimes), the Black Death, Darwin or evolution, DNA or Rosalind Franklin, the Space Race, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, other NASA topics (excluding those already listed and Apollo 13), and the 1918 Flu.

In 2017, 78 projects fell into the medicine category and 58 into the environment category out of 243 STEM projects total. In great contrast to the year before, only 9 projects were related to space. I didn't separate out conservation projects very thoroughly, but projects on the following accounted for 24 environmental/conservation topics: John Muir, Benton MacKaye, conservation, the EPA, Nixon and the environment, Roosevelt and conservation, Neil Compton, the National Park Service, Gaylord Nelson, Audubon Societies, Howard Zahniser, John Lacey, and White Lake vs industrial polluters. There were 20 projects related to mental illness or health activism, with projects focused on Dorothea Dix, Nellie Bly, the Taylor Manor, Elizabeth Packard, and E.T. Payton. 13 projects focused on Margaret Sanger, the Jane Initiative, or the Chicago Women's Health Clinic; the vast majority of those were about Sanger. 11 projects dealt with either Galileo or Copernicus (mostly Galileo), and there were 11 projects about Rachel Carson. 10 projects were about deforestation in some manner; specific topics included Wangari Maathai, Jack Rajala, Gifford Pinchot, and the Chipko Movement, with Maathai being the most common. There were 10 projects related to AIDS activism, and 10 projects about evolution in schools or the Scopes trial.

There were 206 total STEM projects in 2018. There were 49 environment projects, 37 medicine projects, 25 space projects, 15 nuclear projects, and 15 disease projects. Projects related to water rights and usage were much more common than in previous years and account for 18 of the 49 environmental projects. Common topics here included the Colorado River Compact, the Mono Lake Compact, and the Echo Park Dam. The space projects were mostly about the Space Race, Apollo-Soyuz, or NASA computers. The vast majority of the nuclear projects were about the Manhattan Project. (Note: I tried to count only projects that were related to development of nuclear weapons and scientific discussions of ethics related to them. If I had counted other projects about uses of nuclear weapons, the number of nuclear projects would have been much higher.) The most common medical topics were related to medical and research ethics.

The large number of STEM projects in 2016 isn't surprising given the theme, especially after studying which topics were most common. Nearly any space-related topic could be described as exploration, and much of research is exploration. Disease topics can fit neatly as encounter or exchange. Darwin developed his theory of evolution after an exploratory voyage. Scientific research and development of new technology are harder to approach with the theme "Taking a Stand." Many of the most common STEM topics in 2017 were related to some kind of activism, be it for conservation, better mental healthcare, reproductive rights, or increased AIDS awareness and treatment. The other most used topics were more about standing up for science itself. Galileo in particular is a common topic anyway (there were 5 Galileo projects in 2016), so it wasn't surprising to see more projects about him this year when his story was a natural fit for the theme. 2018 shared a focus on the environment and medicine with 2017, but other forms of activism dropped off as topics. Activism usually means there's conflict of some kind, but there isn't always compromise. (The theme doesn't require that a project cover all parts of the title, but the strongest projects usually do.) The strongest trend across 2018 projects was ethics -- ethics of using certain tools, ethics in research, ethics of building a particular structure. Given that, I would have expected more similarities to the 2014 "Rights and Responsibilities" projects than there were. Instead, the water-related projects tie 2018 more to the 2011 "Debate and Diplomacy" projects.

I was surprised to notice that there were no projects at NHD Nationals in 2017 about Henrietta Lacks or HeLa cells. It had been a very common topic for the past half-decade. I suspect it wasn't a good fit for the theme; there were five projects on it again in 2018. The topic that has risen over the past couple of years (because of Hidden Figures and Rocket Girls) is NASA computers.

2011-2018 Finalists

Around 14% of the 2018 finalists ("Conflict and Compromise") were STEM projects, so there was a small increase in STEM percentage from all projects to finalists. The categories with the highest percentages of STEM finalists were exhibit and website, both at 20%, and the lowest were documentary and performance, both at 7.5%. Documentary being so low is particularly notable because it had the highest number of STEM projects total (14%).

Water-related environmental topics were still well-represented among the finalists; they made up 20% of the 25 STEM final projects. 5 additional environment projects were finalists. Both projects in the competition related to oral contraceptives were finalists, and 2 of the 8 projects on chemical weapons made it to finals.

In 2017 ("Taking a Stand"), 19% of the final projects had STEM topics, again an increase from the percentage across all projects. In the paper category, 35% of the final projects were in STEM; that percentage was by far the highest and much higher than across the full paper category. The lowest percentage was in performance, with 12% (consistent with the full category).

34 STEM projects made finals, and 10 were on environmental topics. 5 of those were about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring. 8 of the projects were on medical topics.

29% of the 2016 ("Exploration, Encounter, Exchange") finalists were STEM projects. This is a small increase from the percentage across all projects. The category with the highest percentage of STEM finalists was website at 40% (again a small increase from the full category). The category with the lowest percentage was performance at 15% (consistent with the full category).

In 2016, 53 STEM projects made finals. 11 were disease projects, 6 were bio projects, 5 were space projects (lower than would be expected from the high number of space projects overall), and 5 were medicine projects.

The theme in 2015 was "Leadership and Legacy." About 30% of the finalists were STEM projects. The categories with the highest percentages of STEM projects were documentary and website at 41% and 40% respectively. The performance category was the lowest by a dramatic amount; only 14% of the final projects were STEM projects.

Of the 70 or so finals STEM projects, 20 were related to medicine with 7 more disease projects, and 13 had environmental topics. There were fourteen topics that had multiple projects in finals. Four of them were medicine topics, and three of them were environmental projects. The four most occurring project topics were Marie Curie, smallpox, women in nursing, and the Manhattan Project.

The theme in 2014 was "Rights and Responsibilities." 19% of the finalists were STEM projects. Exhibit had the highest percentage of STEM finals projects (26%), and documentary and website had the lowest (15% and 14% respectively). The percentage of STEM performance finals projects was around average at 19%.

Of the nearly 50 STEM finals projects, 7 were related to engineering. This is a substantial increase on the years before and after, and I think that is tied to the topic. "Rights and Responsibilities" lends itself really well to engineering ethics types of projects, and that's what these mostly were. 15 of the projects were related to medicine, 9 to environmental issues, and 8 to disease. The most common category of topic was medical ethics (in particular, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the Stateville Penitentiary malaria experiment) with 5 projects. The other three top projects were the Johnstown Flood, the National Park Service, and the FDA. Twelve topics had multiple projects in finals. Four of them were medicine; disease, engineering, and environmental science had two topics each; and physics and nuclear science had one topic each.

The theme in 2013 was "Turning Points." 33% of the finalists were STEM projects. A full half of the paper finalists had STEM topics. The category with the lowest percentage of STEM projects was performance at 12.5%. This really dropped the total average; the documentary and exhibit finalists were about 40% STEM each.

The most occurring fields within the STEM finals projects were environmental issues (17 out of 84 projects), technology (13), and medicine (10). Tech was a much larger category than it is most years, and again, I think the tie to the topic is pretty clear. New technology often is either the cause or result of a turning point in society. While enviro is always well-represented, I wouldn't have guessed that this topic would lend itself as well to it as it apparently did. The most common topic was the Manhattan Project/nuclear weapons with a whopping 7 projects, and 5 projects were related to antibiotics. Rachel Carson, nuclear power plant disasters, Lewis and Clark, Sputnik, and the Transcontinental Railroad all had three projects in finals. 15 topics had multiple projects in the finals round. The only fields that had multiple topics in this category were environmental studies (4 topics) and technology (3 topics).

The theme in 2012 was "Revolution, Reaction, Reform." 23% of the finalists had STEM topics. The category with the highest percentage of STEM finalists was exhibit at 29%, and the lowest was performance at 14%, well below all the others.

The most common fields within those projects were environmental topics (12 out of 59), technology (12), medicine (9), and biology (8). As in 2013, tech was a larger category than usual because of the kind of impact technology can have, which ties in well to the 2012 theme. The technology category was also very diverse. Only railroads and automobiles had multiple finalist projects (2 each); the other 8 tech projects were all on different topics. The environment projects were more clustered on the Green Revolution or Rachel Carson. The other topics with multiple finalists were HeLa cells, oral contraceptives, polio, antibiotics, and forest conservation.

The theme in 2011 was "Debate and Diplomacy." Less than 11% of the finals projects had STEM topics. The percentages across categories were relatively even, with paper the highest at 14% and exhibit the lowest at 9%.

14 of the 29 finals projects were on environmental topics. 5 of those were about the Hetch Hetchy or Elhwa River Dams, and 5 of the others were water-related (water rights, clean water, Blue Lake). The other topics with multiple projects in finals were teaching evolution in schools, and Rachel Carson/DDT.

Conclusions

I had expected there to be categories that were clearly the most common or uncommon for STEM projects. While it wasn't always the lowest, performance is the category that consistently has a below average percentage of STEM projects. There was no clear "best" category for STEM, though.

Medicine, environment, and disease are the most common and most consistent broad topic areas. Space, nuclear, and biology are also popular as well and appear commonly across many, though not all, themes. These topics tend to provide stories that are clearly relevant to people's lives and society, and the stories can often be told in ways that don't feel too technical. They are topics that students are likely to encounter in school relatively early, often even in history courses. This is in contrast to other parts of the history of physics and chemistry or to the history of math and computer science, which are largely not part of standard history classes and which (with the exception of math) students may not encounter in detail until later. Biology also seems unique in the extent to which its introductory classes regularly reference its history (how we found out what we know now, who did what experiments, etc.). The others can be taught this way but either generally aren't or aren't at a middle/high school level (as with modern physics).

There is very strong year-to-year variability in number of STEM projects and to a lesser extent in which STEM topics are common. This variation seems tied to theme. "Exploration, Encounter, Exchange," "Turning Points," and "Leadership and Legacy" were the topics I examined that resulted in high percentages of STEM projects (either at nationals or in national finals). "Conflict and Compromise" and "Debate and Diplomacy" yielded the lowest percentages of STEM topics.

The 2018-19 theme is "Triumph and Tragedy," and I expect the number of STEM projects to be a bit above average. I would guess that we'll see many projects on nuclear weapons, disease (epidemics/pandemics, vaccines, cures), spaceflight, the Radium Girls and similar topics, more HeLa again, nuclear power, maybe Rosalind Franklin, and some environmental activism, especially along the lines of Rachel Carson/Silent Spring.

Assumptions and Caveats

There's an assumption in this analysis that the projects that make it to the national contest are representative of all NHD projects. I'm not convinced that this is accurate; while I have no evidence for this, I think there's some value at district and state levels to choosing a unique topic. On the other hand, I'm most interested in the projects that do well, and from that point of view basing the analysis off of national contest projects alone is appropriate.

I want to comment on categorization of projects as well; it's not particularly scientific. There are some project titles that make it impossible to tell what the topic was. Between that and going through nearly 2000 entries, I probably miss some projects that fit in one of my categories. Whether I count something or not can also get a little fuzzy. For example, in 2016 there were a large number of expedition projects. I tried to count those that I knew did extensive flora/fauna work, but I may still have missed some. For 2017, I included a lot of mental health activism projects under science, but there were other disability related projects that I didn't categorize as science (like the several Special Olympics projects).