In a few months, Tyler Marr will realize an opportunity he has been waiting for since 2012 – working with the Juno Beach Centre.

In March of next year – as a result of being named the recipient of one of the two inaugural Juno Beach Centre Fellowships – Marr will visit the Juno Beach Centre in Normandy, France, to study the connection between museums and classrooms.

“I am very excited to be able to work with the centre and contribute to their educational programming,” says Marr. “As part of this Fellowship, I will have the opportunity to travel to the centre and it will be nice to see what has changed since I visited the site last.”

Having first went to the Juno Beach Centre in June of 2012 while participating in the Canadian Battlefield Foundation’s 2012 Study Tour, Marr has been looking for the opportunity to become more active in the organization, and his recent fellowship has allowed him to do just that.

A born-and-raised Niagara resident, Marr is a long-term occasional secondary teacher with the District School Board of Niagara with an interest in museum history, which has been the focus of his ongoing Masters of Education degree.

“Experiential education is a very important aspect of education that engages students and enriches the learning at all levels,” says Marr. “Especially in the Niagara Region, we have a wealth of local history that should be shared in the classrooms and numerous local museums that can contribute to this. My research focuses on the ways that secondary students can receive experiential education through the use of museums in Niagara.”

Marr’s advisor, Associate Professor Peter Vietgen, acknowledges the dedication and important work being done by Marr to help shape the ways students absorb history.

“Tyler is a most deserving recipient of this prestigious fellowship,” says Vietgen. “His passion and commitment to history education has been clearly evident along every step of his graduate work. With the focus of his research being museum education, Tyler creates curriculum materials that bring history alive and is always concerned with student engagement and relevancy. I know his contributions to the Juno Beach Centre will be implemented and greatly valued.”

A long-time student of museum history, Marr worked at the Niagara Falls History Museum throughout his undergraduate degree at Brock and has seen his interest in how the museum and experiential education can fit into the classroom continue to grow.

Marr hopes to use his time at the centre to continue his research on the value of experiential education, which he says “is immense – and students learn a great deal through the authentic and relevant learning experiences.”

For more on the centre visit www.junobeach.org