The Advisory Board for Black Student Spiritual Support (ABBSSS) is an initiative of the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life to make spiritual support for Black students more available, accessible, and visible. Our mission is to listen and respond to the needs of Black students. ABBSSS aims to offer personal and communal support for the myriad ways in which Black students are spiritual, religious, not religious, or searching, and to acknowledge the cultural, ethnic, familial, geographic, and historical intersections between the Black experience and spirituality.

BSSSAB Elon University Professional Team

BSSSAB Community Partner Professional Team

Chelsea Yarborough

Visiting Professor at Wake Forest School of Divinity

Chelsea Brooke Yarborough is a poet, an enneagram enthusiast, an ordained minister and a lover of leadership development. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University and a visiting professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Chelsea’s current research imagines the possibilities of preaching outside of the pulpit by looking at historical Black women who were non-pulpit preachers. Her motto is “live to love and love to live each day and she is excited to continue her journey of cultivating and engaging curiosity in all that she pursues.”

Rev. Donna Vanhook

Associate Pastor at Union Chapel UCC

Rev. Donna Vanhook, a former certified law enforcement officer, earned a BA degree from Elon University where she majored in Religious Studies and minored in Human Services (Class of 2007), and an MDiv degree from Shaw University Divinity School. She has been ordained Baptist and currently serves as an United Church of Christ associate pastor in full standing at Union Chapel UCC, in Burlington, NC. Rev. Vanhook uses an intersectional equity lens as a womanist community organizer and co-educator who mentors undergraduate students at Elon University along with other young people.