Announcing the New Playa Vista Campus

Message from the President
February 9, 2017

Dear LMU Community: 

This week we finalized a long-term lease to establish the LMU Playa Vista Campus, part of our comprehensive strategy to strengthen our connection with Los Angeles as the University of Silicon Beach. We will fly our LMU flag proudly at 12105 West Waterfront Drive, where we will occupy approximately 50,000 square feet of space at The Brickyard Playa Vista. We will offer classes there beginning fall 2018.

Building upon our longstanding relationships with Playa Vista, our new campus will house our graduate programs in the School of Film and Television, while also yielding the opportunity to host new academic programs and strategic initiatives. Our parallel efforts through programs like the M-School, Center for Urban Resilience, Entrepreneurship, School of Education’s Family of Schools, and others across our colleges and schools will continue to advance our Silicon Beach partnerships. As the pace and frequency of our collaborations with Silicon Beach accelerate, we all have a stake in establishing the new Playa Vista Campus as a pivotal location for our endeavors.

As we advance boldly and imaginatively, I remind our community that a move of this magnitude is a complex proposition, requiring extensive collaboration between academic and administrative colleagues. We will share more information in the coming weeks and months. I invite you to review our LMU Playa Vista Campus FAQs and submit your own questions, which will be answered as the process evolves.

While we envision the School of Film and Television’s graduate programs as our anchor occupants for the new campus, we are exploring other areas that may benefit by proximity to Playa Vista culture and industry. Mindful of these new opportunities, I asked our deans to engage our faculty and discuss how we might reimagine or relocate our offerings and scholarly contributions. We will continue to facilitate dialogue and ensure congruity, especially in light of shared governance, as we move forward together as a community. Together we will design and create landmark spaces that reflect our academic, creative, and interdisciplinary ambitions.

We are conscious of the environmental and traffic impacts in our area, so we will offer ongoing free shuttle service between our campuses. As we grow, we will maintain a dynamic physical connection to our Westchester and Law School campuses to bridge our curricular and co-curricular offerings.

LMU is the definitive center for global imagination and its impacts: Our LMU Playa Vista Campus supports our shared mission and vision by engaging our individual and collective creativity, by extending our global reach through our Silicon Beach partnerships, and by opening new possibilities for interdisciplinary and immersive learning opportunities for our students. As we celebrate this milestone, I thank you for your support thus far and for your optimism for our future. We will continue to blaze our path forward together in ways previously unimagined -- as St. Ignatius encouraged us, to “go forth and set the world on fire.”

With sincere appreciation and thanks,

Timothy Law Snyder, Ph.D.
President