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The Impact

The Mission

The Tom and Vi School of Business develops leaders who create value and make a difference and enlarges human understanding of business and society.

To fulfill this mission, the School:

  • delivers a curriculum that stimulates creativity; reflects La Sierra's Seventh-day Adventist Christian mission; and encourages moral responsibility, spiritual growth, collaboration, and economic and social entrepreneurship;

  • challenges students to redefine business and raise global living standards by building innovative products, markets, and organizations;

  • supports a co-curricular program that offers students distinctive opportunities to grow as leaders, develop business skills, and engage in global service; and

  • encourages faculty members and students to engage in wide-ranging, creative, intellectual inquiry validated through professional practice and publication in scholarly books and journals.

Student & Community Engagement

Startup Garages

Is your business idea ready to take to market? Something as simple as a lack of office space shouldn't have to hold you back. Submit your business plan to the Dean's Office, and you can be selected for a free lease on office space in our building to help you get started. Each year, we provide space in our "Startup Garage" offices along with mentoring and additional guidance for our business students.

Clubs

  • Business Club
  • Accounting and Finance Society
  • Marketing Society
  • Golf Club
  • Investment Club
  • Society for Human Resource Managers

Innovation Lab

Enactus - a student-run non-profit

2016 National Champion Presentation

About the Enactus Team

The La Sierra University Enactus Team is one of over 1,500 teams in thirty-nine countries using the positive power of business to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.

Our team operates as a catalyst for sustainable development, ensuring that its transformative work can grow and continue in the future even without further Enactus’ involvement.

Enactus members from across the university work together, applying all that they learn in the classroom, and design projects to address some of the most difficult problems facing our world today. 

What can a student do to change the world? Find out in the Enactus Team. Open to all La Sierra University students.

Service-Learning

This teaching strategy integrates classroom experience with community engagement, providing students with an opportunity to put their newfound knowledge, skills, and abilities into purposeful practice.

Service-Learning is utilized in courses taught by Zapara School of Business Faculty including:

  • Management Strategy (John Razzouk)
  • Service Marketing
  • Religion, Values, and Social Responsibility in Business (Jere Fox)
  • Honors Community Involvement (John Razzouk)

Support the ZSB

Donate

Contact Us

business@lasierra.edu
Phone: (951) 785-2464
Fax: (951) 785-2700


Heather Miller
Graduate Academic Advising


Kevin Speyer
ZSB Info Systems Coordinator


Lovelyn Razzouk
Office of the Dean

Schedule an Appointment


Yaya Calvillo

Schedule an Appointment

Samuel Nikuze
Graduate Advisor

Schedule an Appointment


Kevin Straine


ZSB Office Team

The Dean

Business education at La Sierra University has entered a new era. We are transforming and revitalizing teaching, scholarship, and service in the Tom and Vi Zapara School of Business. Our goal: to help students to create value so they can make a difference.

Our program gives students the skills they need to create value in the new millennium by building on our strengths in the core areas of business. We offer an MBA with majors in accounting, finance, general management, human resource management, and marketing. Our MBA curriculum is the only one in the world that requires core coursework in business ethics, social entrepreneurship, and workplace spirituality. We also offer a BS with majors in accounting, finance, political economy, business and society, and marketing and a BA in management. A customized major program lets a student design a tailor-made curriculum building on our offerings and, where appropriate, those of other schools on campus.

Our Executive Education program offers the La Sierra MBA to students throughout the region—either at or near their workplaces. And it also delivers the Integrated MBA program, which allows a student with only an associate degree or the equivalent to earn a BA and an MBA in only four years.

The School of Business is home to a newly opened Center for Philanthropy, the only one of its kind in the Inland Empire. The Center, headed by nationally recognized philanthropic fundraiser James L. Erickson, is already equipping area non-profits to respond effectively to economic challenges by building lasting relationships with supporters.

We are proud of a student-friendly culture marked by responsiveness and flexibility: faculty members, administrators, and staff members try to meet student needs quickly, fairly, and sensitively. The School of Business faculty is made up of capable professionals, frequently with significant outside-the-classroom experience as consultants, researchers, or both. And the entire School of Business team is committed to providing students with educational experiences that challenge them to make a tangible difference in the world, that stimulate their minds and hearts, enlarge their imaginations, and help them to build lasting friendships. By organizing social entrepreneurial ventures, helping people in need, and conducting community education programs, our students can develop empathy and deepen their understanding of the real-world significance of their studies. We promise our students an extraordinary preparation for responsible servant- leadership in business, government, and the nonprofit sector.

The Zapara School of Business is home to La Sierra University’s award-winning Enactus (formerly SIFE) team. La Sierra’s Enactus students have won an unprecedented two World Cup and four international championships in Enactus' demanding annual competition, in which team performance is judged by top executives from major national and global corporations.

To house our growing programs, the Tom and Vi Zapara School of Business entered the 2013 academic year in its new home at the front of the La Sierra University campus. With room for 750 full-time students and thirty faculty members, as well as a 400-seat conference center that to serve the entire Inland region, the new building is a showcase of our exciting vision and provide a stimulating environment in which teaching and scholarship can take place.

Expressing our commitment to service by emphasizing social entrepreneurship, workplace spirituality, and ethics, we can make a real difference in the world. We hope you'll join us.

DR. JOHN THOMAS, DEAN

The Story - Tom and Vi Zapara

Tom and Vi Zapara are a couple who have for many years shown an extraordinary belief in La Sierra University’s School of Business. And now this couple has taken a major step in tangibly expressing their continuing support as we begin this building process.

Thomas and Vi, both alumni of La Sierra University, have been living examples of the visionary business leaders educated at La Sierra University. Early in his career, Tom established Zee Medical, Inc., in 1952. Tom gave his nickname—“Zee”—to the fledgling company. His first corporate headquarters was his home’s garage. The Zaparas persevered though, and the company grew until it served more than 400,000 manufacturing plants, construction firms, restaurants, hotels, offices and other firms in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, providing occupational first aid and safety products, training, and services. The Zaparas sold the company 30 years later.

The Zaparas have long possessed an extraordinary vision for the potential of Adventist education. They regularly back that commitment through their generous philanthropic support. Today, Tom and Vi tangibly demonstrated their special devotion to helping La Sierra University be all that it can be by making a major commitment to the construction of our business building.  Through this action, this generous couple is made a key investment in La Sierra University to help fulfill its potential.

“Vi and I have dreamed about this new business school building for the last few years and we’re just delighted that God has blessed it…God has a great plan for that school. The challenge is for us to tune in for what God has in mind.”

The Zaparas decided to contribute to the business school’s advancement largely because of the precedent-setting success of its Enactus (formerly known as SIFE) team. Based in the School of Business and comprised of students from various academic majors, the team has won seven national trophies and two world cups in annual Enactus competitions, making the team one of the most successful and prominent in the global organization.

“We’ve been so impressed with the La Sierra business school SIFE team over the years…SIFE put La Sierra on the map. SIFE is still a very key component of that school. It became so obvious, if this [business school] is going to progress, they need more space.”

And they offered their support as an inspiration to other friends of the School of Business to engage in its continued growth and development.

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