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The Press-Enterprise reports:

La Sierra University's School of Business hit a record enrollment this fall, making it the first Seventh-day Adventist school of its kind in North America to exceed 400 students.

The business school reported a total enrollment of 410 -- 151 are students in master's programs and 259 are undergraduates. The number of graduate students also is unprecedented among Adventist business schools, according to La Sierra spokesman Larry Becker.
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Southern Adventist University's business school in Collegedale, Tenn., enrolls 399 students. The third largest with 196 business students is at Andrew University in Berrien Spring, Mich.
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A boon to its growth, said its dean John Thomas (pictured), is its increased prominence through its Students in Free Enterprise Team. This group takes on local and global economic projects ranging from business startup assistance in Riverside County to a medical scrubs enterprise in the African village of Kalaala.

This fall's overall enrollment at La Sierra University is 1,899 students, still a bit below 2003 when 1,946 students signed up. The school expected the small decline because the graduating classes from "feeder" Seventh-day Adventist high schools had dropped off, but are slowly picking up, Becker wrote in an e-mail.

To help attract students, La Sierra University hired Marilyn Thomsen Sept. 29 to fill a marketing/communications position created earlier this year.

A master plan calls for a goal of 2,500 students in the near future, with long-range plans to double that figure, Becker said.

Most students are from Southern California. Seventy percent of the students are Seventh-day Adventist, the rest represent 33 different denominations. All but 10 of the 111 faculty members are Adventist. . . .