In alignment with a steady trend of growth, Biola is poised once again to claim the spot as La Mirada’s top employer, and city officials say Biola continues to make a positive economic and spiritual impact on its surrounding community.
After a hiring freeze that lasted from summer 2008 – fall 2010, Biola is once again creating new positions, adding over 20 new faculty members just this year. Biola currently employs 429 full-time and adjunct faculty and 883 staff members bringing the total number of positions to 1,312, according to the Human Resources department.
Employing members of the community
Aside from a dip in 2010 due to the freeze, Biola’s employment number has steadily increased each year, adding more than 450 jobs over the past 10 years, according to statistics from Human Resources. Biola leads La Mirada’s second-ranked employer, US Foodservice, by over 500 positions.
La Mirada city manager Tom Robinson says that the employment base Biola provides is one of the biggest impacts it makes on the community.
“Biola is a major employer in the community so many of the people who live in and around the university are employees of the university, or have attended the university, or are in some way affiliated with it.”
The school is looked upon by the community not just as a good neighbor, but as family, according to Robinson, who has been city manager for the past three and a half years. In fact, two out of the five current city council members, including the mayor, are Biola grads.
“The city of La Mirada and Biola University have enjoyed a long and positive relationship over the more than 50 years that the school has been in La Mirada,” said Robinson, noting that Biola actually pre-dates by two years the incorporation of La Mirada as a city in 1960.
Maintaining a positive relationship
Biola has worked hard to develop and maintain this family relationship said history professor Dave Peters, who also served 25 years on the La Mirada city council. Peters noted that when re-locating the campus to La Mirada, Biola’s founders personally went door to door through the neighborhoods to strike up conversations in the community.
“The town and gown relationship, which in many communities is very sensitive, and at times negative, in La Mirada’s case, in Biola’s case, has always been positive,” Robinson confirmed.
Students positively affect the La Mirada economy
Although Biola does not technically raise any revenue for the city, other than a small amount of sales tax from purchases made at the Biola Bookstore, the school benefits the city monetarily in other ways by both providing jobs and also supporting the local economy. The campus houses thousands of students whose spending habits positively impact local businesses.
Tanya Lopez, 25, who has worked at the Starbucks on the corner of Imperial Highway and La Mirada Boulevard as a shift supervisor for the past six years, says Biola students are key to their business.
“You guys keep us open, definitely,” Lopez said. “A lot of [Biola] kids come here. When you guys are gone, we are empty.”
A quick glance around the coffee shop proves her point, as students sip on iced drinks while taking up tables and electrical outlets for their afternoon study sessions.
“I go to Starbucks every day if I can to do homework,” said sophomore elementary education major Vanessa Coleman, who is a Starbucks gold card member.
Senior psychology major Stephanie Sulea agrees that Biola students greatly impact local business.
“I don’t go to Chick-fil-A very often, but whenever I go, there’s nothing but Biola students in there,” Sulea said. “There’s Biola sweaters and car stickers all over the place.”
While it is impossible to empirically measure just how much revenue Biola students provide to surrounding local businesses, the impact, Robinson says, is certainly significant. Biola pumped $14.6 million into the local economy in retail, accommodation and food sales in the year 2005, according to the school’s most recent economic impact report.
Intellectually and Spiritually impacting the community
But Biola also leaves an impact on the community that goes beyond the impression it makes on the local economy. The college provides cultural opportunities and is a concentrated center of diverse scholarship, attracting top quality thinkers from around the world.
“Any university in a city has a wonderful input on the culture,” said Peters. “It has a leavening effect I believe intellectually, and in Biola’s case spiritually.”
Robinson agreed that Biola not only heightens the educational level of the community, but provides an awareness of moral values that positively influences the surrounding cities. La Mirada is known as one of the safest and cleanest cities in Los Angeles County. And it is the “intangibles,” as Robinson called them, that are perhaps Biola’s most important effect of all.
“We have an impact,” Peters said. “We are the light and the salt of the community in a lot of ways. Biola is not a church, but everybody at Biola has a commitment to the church.”
