Milken Center hosts project kick-off

Lowell Milken Center Program Director Megan Felt goes through information on the National History Day competition with students at the center on Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday was National Project Kick-Off Day and involved teachers and students from across the country and calling in from three countries and 11 states. (Ruth Campbell/Tribune)

Teachers and students from Fort Scott and across the nation and world on Tuesday participated in the Lowell Milken Center's National Project Kick-Off.

The Lowell Milken Center helps discover, develop and communicate the stories of unsung heroes who have made a profound and positive difference on the course of history. The projects on which it works with students and teachers follow that same theme. It also works with students on National History Day projects, which 30 students, parents and teachers locally got information on.

"This is sort of the ceremonial kick-off of what we're doing," Executive Director Norm Conard said.

"Turning Points in History" is the theme for this year's National History Day competition. District competition is March 2, 2013, state is April 20, 2013, and nationals are June 9-13, 2013, at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Program Director Megan Felt's winning National History Day project had the same theme and became the most famous venture of its kind. "Top that," Felt told those assembled at the center. "That's my challenge to you."

The center partners with local history experts and Fort Scott Community College instructors and administration to help local students develop their projects. A mixture of homeschooled, public and private school students attended Tuesday's gathering.

FSCC Board of Trustees member Robert Nelson and retired history instructor Don Miller critique local students' projects. FSCC history instructor and District Coordinator John Seal administers the district history competition. Felt and Conard lead the direction of the projects and a staff of highly qualified educators also helps in project development around the world, a news release said.

Youngsters can create websites, documentaries, performance pieces, exhibits and historical papers as history day projects.

Conard offered several suggestions including finding someone who had a part in the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism in Eastern Europe; anniversaries, such as the 150th year of the Emancipation Proclamation and finding someone relatively unknown connected with that; Prudence Crandall, a Quaker who used education to integrate classrooms; Glyndwr Michael, whose body was used to confuse Hitler during World War II; and Eliza Whitman, who along with her husband was an Oregon Trail pioneer, among others.

Christin Guifoyle, who is homeschooled, said she's looking forward to starting her history day project. "I'm excited," she said. "I want to do someone from World War II," likely a figure from the Holocaust.