Last month marked another exciting first for the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music: in addition to welcoming our first Monmouth University class, we welcomed our first high school field trip!
On Wednesday, September 30, 80 freshmen from Biotechnology High School in Freehold arrived at Monmouth University for a day designed to introduce them not only to the Center, but to the University campus and to the many ways music can help us explore American history, culture, creativity, and identity.
The students began their Center experience together in the Powell Soundstage with our introductory film by Emmy and GRAMMY award-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny. From there, they divided into two groups of 40 and spent the remainder of the visit rotating between guided tours of the Center and the Monmouth University campus.
Inside the Center, the students weren’t simply asked to randomly look at objects in cases. We wanted them to explore with purpose.
Each student received an “American Music Trading Card” featuring the image and name of an American musician represented in our galleries. Their challenge was to find their artist and learn something about them along the way — transforming a museum visit into a musical scavenger hunt and encouraging students to make discoveries of their own.
The Center’s interactive experiences were also a big hit, from the song bars to the Music America map and beyond. At one point, several groups of students could be found dancing in our immersive “in-concert” space as footage of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played around them.
This group was fortunate to tour Chimes of Freedom: Protest, Patriotism, and the Power of Song, which will be in our temporary gallery through the end of 2026. Chimes explores how, since our nation’s inception, Americans across the political spectrum have used music to advocate for causes they believe in.
The visit concluded with the students coming back together for a group photo and debrief before boarding their buses for the trip back to school.
Just as meaningful as the students’ enthusiasm was the response from their teachers and chaperones. They thanked our team for the educational experience and repeatedly commented on how organized and stress-free the day had been — particularly important when coordinating a trip for 80 high school students.
That is exactly what we want our field trip program to be: engaging for students, valuable for educators, and as easy as possible for schools to access.
And no two field trips to the Springsteen Center have to look exactly alike.
Our team can work directly with teachers to customize visits around their students, curriculum, learning goals, and interests. A field trip might focus on American history, music, social movements, songwriting, technology, art, cultural identity, protest and civic engagement, or another area that connects with what students are learning in the classroom. Visits can also incorporate the larger Monmouth University campus, as Biotechnology High School’s did.
Most importantly, we want these opportunities to be available to students regardless of a school’s resources.
Thanks to the generosity of our donors and supporters, field trips to the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music are completely free for K–12 students, teachers, and chaperones. And because we know that free admission does not eliminate every barrier to taking a field trip, support for transportation and lunches is also available for schools where those costs might otherwise make a visit difficult or impossible.
We don’t want a school’s budget to be the reason its students can’t walk through our doors.
Biotechnology High School was our first high school field trip, but it certainly won’t be our last. We already have more than 30 school visits in the works, and we are eager to welcome many more.
The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music was built to preserve and interpret music history, but it was also built to be used — by scholars, fans, families, educators, and especially students. Days like this one demonstrate what can happen when the museum becomes a classroom and music becomes a doorway into something larger.
Melissa Kozlowski
Director of Curatorial Affairs
Aidan Vogel
Museum Educator
Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music
Monmouth University
October 4, 2026
