La Sierra University is a private, Seventh-day Adventist university in Riverside, California. Founded in 1922 as La Sierra Academy, it later became La Sierra College, a liberal arts college, and then was merged into Loma Linda University (LLU) in 1967 and became the Loma Linda University La Sierra College of Arts and Sciences. In 1990, the La Sierra Campus separated from Loma Linda University to become La Sierra University, an independent institution. It is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), the Adventist Accrediting Association (AAA), and several discipline-based accrediting bodies.

Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire and in Riverside County, and is about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is also part of the Greater Los Angeles area. Riverside is the 59th-most-populous city in the United States and the 12th-most-populous city in California. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 314,998. Along with San Bernardino, Riverside is a principal city in the nation's 13th-largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA); the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA ranks in population just below San Francisco (4,749,008) and above Detroit (4,392,041).