CCASM Sponsors 2014 Charles County History Day Special Award

The 16th Annual Charles County History Day competition was held March 22, 2014.  CCASM sponsored one of the special awards.  Carol Cowherd represented CCASM at the awards ceremony.  

The CCASM award of $50 and one-year membership in CCASM went to Madison Furman.  Madison also won second place in the Individual Historical Paper Category, Junior Division.  So she will be going to the State competition.  Madison attends General Smallwood Middle School. 

Congratulations, Madison.

History Day judges identify projects that they consider outstanding, and the projects with the most "votes" are assigned to one of the sponsoring organizations.  So the projects receiving awards should be well done, demonstrate critical thinking, as well as have sound conclusions.

CCASM sponsors one award to help make students more aware of archaeology.  This is the third year that we have sponsored an award.  The previous two projects assigned to us were not that relevant to archaeology.  This year we tried to improve the odds by requesting a project related to specific area.  Unfortunately there was not enough outstanding projects that met that criteria.  So we were assigned the project that probably had the least relevance to archaeology.

So what needs to be done differently in the future.

First, we need to be more specific about our intent that the project demonstrates historical research and analytical skills relevant to the field of archaeology.  If there is a question, we also need to be allowed to decide whether or not a project meets that intent. 
Second, there need to be judges who have an understanding of what archaeology is.   There are judges at the state and national competitions who are unclear as to what archaeology is.  So it stands to reason that there are judges at the county level that don't know.

Please let us know if you have any ideas about how to make this happen.