At the Hoover History Skills Academy, Teens Delight in Archival Discoveries
The Hoover History Lab’s new offering for secondary school students, the Hoover History Skills Academy, was held in July 2025, receiving high marks from attendees. The Academy, which gave secondary school students the opportunity to learn best practices for designing, researching, and writing a substantive historical research paper, also gave the high school students access to the extraordinary historical materials in the renowned Hoover Library and Archives.
The event was jointly operated by the Hoover History Lab and The Concord Review (TCR), publishers of America’s only journal for exceptional historical research papers—often 30 pages or more—written by high-school students.
Through the program’s guest speakers, students were given a glimpse of what professional historians do and how their work benefits from working with primary sources such as those in historical archives and rare book libraries. Student findings in the Hoover Library & Archives included original letters, historic newspapers, diaries, and artifacts such as war medals.
Two dozen high school students, whose winning applications were selected from a pool of 115 applicants based on their research proposals, attended the inaugural event from locations worldwide, including Korea, Singapore, Europe, and throughout the USA.
Demonstrating extraordinary capabilities, the students quickly learned how to refine their chosen research topics and develop a clear outline for their project, which they will continue to develop over the coming months with the goal of submitting their finished paper for potential publication in TCR’s highly selective journal as a standout pre-collegiate accomplishment.
The Hoover History Lab is determined to provide opportunities to students of all ages to engage in meaningful historical work, in collaboration with the Hoover Library & Archives and other key partners.
Due to the resounding success of the inaugural program, the Hoover History Lab aims to implement the summer Academy annually, while also exploring ways to scale up by leveraging digitized original documents. Program details for the next session are expected to become available by late October of 2026.
To learn more about our 2026 event, please visit History Skills Academy 2026 | Hoover Institution.
For more information on the Hoover History Lab, visit Hoover History Lab | Hoover Institution
For more information on The Concord Review, visit https://tcr.org/
Interested in visiting the Hoover Library & Archives? Plan your individual research visit or class and group visit today.
