Contact OBSS
Phone: 310.338.5808
Email: obss@lmu.edu
Office: Malone Student Center 201
Hours: Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Goals
- To promote and celebrate African and African American culture and heritage, providing students and the campus community with an understanding of the history, successes and contemporary struggles of Africans/African Americans.
- To assist and guide students in the processes of exploring their identities and making sound, well-informed decisions regarding their futures.
- To develop leaders and change agents who are prepared to effectuate positive change within the campus community as well as their home communities upon graduation.
- To create co-curricular programming that the knowledge that builds up and enhances the knowledge that students obtain in the classroom.
- To develop and maintain a sense of community that uplifts Africans/African American cultural traditions at LMU.
Meet the Director
Kwyn Townsend Riley
Director, Office of Black Student Services
Email: Kwyn.TownsendRiley@lmu.edu
Kwyn Townsend Riley is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner and artist. She most recently served as the multicultural spaces coordinator in the Center for Multicultural Student Services at James Madison University. She also previously served as a Bayard Rustin Fellow in the Community Renewal Society in Chicago and as a graduate assistant in the Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center at Western Illinois University. Riley earned a master’s degree in college student personnel from Western Illinois University and a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of Dayton. She is a proud member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, the Black Youth Project 100, and the Chicago Scholars Associate Board. Riley also serves on the PAN Directorate Board for the American College Personnel Association.
Riley has authored two poetry books and an award-winning poetry album as a decorated slam poet. CBS has recognized her as a “history-maker” for her social justice work and organizing. As a Black Queer feminist, she envisions a world where we all are free. Riley loves a chocolate frosty from Wendy’s, her family, and working with college students.