Last Updated on April 30, 2025 by BVN
Overview: Brandon Gamble has joined California State University, San Bernardino, as the inaugural director of the Office of Black Student Success (OBSS). Gamble, who has over 20 years of experience in higher education, aims to expand the office’s programs and support services for students, including mentoring, peer mentoring, and community engagement. He also plans to create a Black experience course for entering students, focusing on Black identity development and CSUSB Black history.
Alyssah Hall
Dr. Brandon Gamble joined California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) as the inaugural director for their new Office of Black Student Success (OBSS) in July of 2024.
The Black Student Success report published in the summer of 2023, by “The Chancellor’s Strategic Workgroup,” was a call to action for the Cal State University (CSU) system to advance Black student success and elevate Black excellence in the CSU’s.
Following up on this report, CSU completed a systemwide inventory to gain a better understanding of how their 23 universities are supporting Black student success. This led to the OBSS being launched at CSUSB in the summer of 2024.
Gamble was a graduate student at San Diego State University (SDSU) when the late Dr. Sharon Grant-Henry was SDSU’s department chair of counseling and school psychology. Gamble credits Grant-Henry for guiding him toward the path to higher education.
“For whatever reason, she saw some leadership potential in me. I was a graduate assistant as well as a student, so I just spent a lot of time with her, watching her do what she did. I didn’t think much about it until maybe almost two years later when I was teaching at various universities in the LA area,” Gamble said.
Gamble has over 20 years experience in higher education and has held many roles including being a faculty scholar and director at San Diego State University’s Black Resource Center; serving as associate professor at Cal State University, Long Beach;as well as several teaching positions at institutions like Loyola Marymount University and others.
“The Inland Empire has some of the highest achieving Black students in the state. As an alum of the CSU, as a child of two CSU graduates…I just see the real strong value in the CSU, and I know the IE could benefit from a strong CSU and in particular, with the emphasis in the state supporting Black student success, it’s just the place to be. This is one of the fastest growing areas in the state as well,” Gamble said.
The Office of Black Student Success is not the first of the Black centers or resources for students at CSUSB; it’s just an expansion. Gamble said that the office allows them to do more than one program. Now they have several program offerings.
“We’ve expanded to having mentoring by faculty and staff for our student assistants. We have peer mentoring that is done by our upper class folks who are second year and above,” shared Gamble. “The BSS office has also expanded to supporting the work of the Pan African Student Success Center [and] the Black Faculty and Staff Student Association.”
Gamble shared that much of the work done at the BSS office is following outlined goals that were set before the office came into being, some of which are from the state. The BSS report is very clear about supporting student retention and graduation as a long-term goal.
The OBSS is passionate about connecting with community members and supporting and hosting events that bring the community to campus. They held a natural hair day on campus in collaboration with the San Bernardino City Unified School District. They also worked with CSUSB’s outreach office and hosted a scholarship summit with Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. to make sure that students knew about scholarships and support to help them through college.
One of the biggest developments OBSS is looking forward to implementing in the future is creating a Black experience course for CSUSB’s entering students. This class will focus on basic class requirements, and will add other pieces like Black identity development and CSUSB Black history.
“Because we know that when students are well knowledgeable and embedded and clear on their identity, they do better academically,” Gamble said.
Gamble said that many times students who come from complex backgrounds or are the first in their family to go to college, are accustomed to being more independent and doing things on their own.
“When they get to college, it’s a gear shift to have to trust other people to help them navigate it, but they’re really not going to make it without trusting other people and [using] resources that are on the campus,” Gamble said.
“The challenge is that they don’t have those family members to help them navigate… So in essence, we become their support system and really kind of their guides to help them navigate, thus all the mentoring that we seek to do,” Gamble continued.
Gamble explained that one of the rewarding parts of his job is to connect students with counseling or basic needs and seeing their faces light up when they realize they don’t have to do it all alone.
This article is part of the 2025 Black Voice News Series, Black Leaders in Higher Education in the Inland Empire and is produced in partnership with the Black Voice Foundation.
