Riverside, California, May 16, 2001--A group of enterprising college students representing La Sierra University participated at the 2001 SIFE USA National Exposition, sponsored by the Kansas City Business Community, May 13-15 in Missouri.

La Sierra SIFE team poses in front of the display board showing the SIFE champion teams from a few years ago, which include four displays featuring the La Sierra University team. (first-place winners 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997)

During national competition, SIFE teams presented 24-minute multi-media summaries of the educational outreach projects they developed and implemented throughout the year. They were judged by a panel drawn from more than 750 of the nation’s top business and community leaders. The SIFE USA National Champion, Drury University, Springfield, Missouri, will compete at the inaugural SIFE World Cup in London, England, July 12-13.

The La Sierra University SIFE team competed against more than 150 teams representing more than 2200 students around the country. La Sierra University's team was named First Runner-Up in the field of 150.

Each team competed and won at one of twenty regional competitions. The La Sierra University SIFE Team was named Regional Champion at the western states exposition held in April, in Los Angeles.

At the national exposition, La Sierra University SIFE team won first place and $3,000 in the AT&T Best Use of the Internet Teaching Students K-12 Award; third place and $1,000 in the SIFE National Teach a Child about Business Week Award; and Johnny Thomas, PhD, dean of the La Sierra University School of Business and Management, won Most Supportive Dean of the Year Award. In all, the prize money totaled $10,000.

LSU SIFE's winning projects included:

• The Cow Bank, a program built on a micro-lending model that lends a milking cow to villagers in India instead of money. Families who receive cows use some of the milk themselves and sell the rest. Full repayment of the loan is made with the first female calf produced by the cow.
• Little Red Hen, a micro-enterprise project in Mexico that taught students at a school and an orphanage how to operate an egg business. The SIFE Team also taught the children concepts such as market research, profit and loss and social responsibility.
• Welfare-to-Work Childcare, a 12-week series of modules that taught former welfare-dependent individuals and others how to become childcare providers and gave them practical business training.

La Sierra's SIFE team has 87 members, with 17 in leadership positions, according to Heather Miller, SIFE faculty fellow. Miller was named a Sam M. Walton Free Enterprise Fellow in recognition of her leadership and support of the SIFE program at La Sierra. About 31 students, faculty, and administrators attended the national competition in Kansas City.

La Sierra University is a private, four-year university with a College of Arts and Sciences, and graduate schools of Religion, Education, and Business and Management, located in Riverside, Calif. The University was founded in 1922, and is affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Founded in 1975 and active on more than 1000 college and university campuses in 20 countries, SIFE is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with business and higher education to provide college students with the opportunity to make a difference and to develop leadership, teamwork and communication skills through learning, practicing and teaching the principles of free enterprise. For more information, contact SIFE World Headquarters at 1-800-677-SIFE or La Sierra University SIFE at 785-2225, or visit http://www.SIFE.org
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More info about La Sierra's SIFE team: http://www.lasierra.edu/news/apr2001/sife2001.html

http://www.lasierra.edu/news/apr2001/sifeGI.html

On the 5/21/01 Morning Edition of National Public Radio, LSU SIFE is mentioned over and over and over again!

http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=05/21/2001&PrgID=3

About 1/2 way down the page, 7th story, before the Cokie Roberts story.