GREENVILLE — Amelia Earhart, Queen Elizabeth I, Stephen Mather and Frida Kahlo — these were some of the names featured as about 360 students from across the state’s northeastern region celebrated those who took a stand in history.

It was all part of East Carolina University’s annual National History Day competition last Thursday, in which students competed in five categories: exhibits, performance, documentaries, websites and papers. Students are divided into middle school and high school groups, and then present on people who are known for “Taking a Stand in History.”

ECU has hosted National History Day for more than 20 years, but this was the first year in recent history that students from Beaufort County participated.

Kayla Dunlow, a teacher at Beaufort County Early College High School, brought 21 of her students to compete. Teachers and students work on the projects for about six months before presenting at the regional National History Day event.

Early College student Gray Godley placed fifth in the exhibit category and will move on to compete at the state level on April 29. Godley, 15, is a Washington resident and is the son of Ronnie and Rondi Godley.

“For some, I think people thought automatically controversial, but they were actually discouraged from doing current events, and the reason for that was they wanted the effect to be measurable, and it’s hard to measure the effect of something that happened a month ago,” said Mia Thompson, co-coordinator of the event, about this year’s theme.

The top three projects in performance, documentaries, websites and papers will move on to the state level, and the top five projects in exhibits will move on, according to Thompson.

“As a university, that’s a great opportunity for us to show off our department and what our university can provide to these students, especially the local ones,” Thompson said. “National History Day annually has about 500,000 students that compete across the United States … and to say that we are a part of that and helping to harness those students participating in something nationwide is a powerful thing. A lot of these students are being interviewed for the very first time by professionals. They are being asked to dress in business casual attire for the very first time.”

She said this competition would not be possible each year without the educators who work with the students. Although the northeast region was cut in half this year, Thompson said the number of entries increased by about 25 percent.

Seeing a new school compete, such as Beaufort County Early College, is also exciting for the event’s organizers.

“It’s giving these new students a chance to grow into the adults that they will be tomorrow,” Thompson said. “We would love to reach out more to Beaufort County. We would love to reach out more to Hyde and surrounding counties.”