Mills College just received a $10 million pledge to grow a graduate business school that will seek to increase the number of women in the world of business.

The gift from Lorry Lokey, chairman and CEO of Business Wire, is the largest from a living donor in the Oakland women's college's 152-year history.

Mills will use the funds to make its existing MBA program into a full-fledged business school in five years. College officials say the school is sorely needed. Women now make up just a third of students in graduate business education nationwide.

"We think it's important for us to provide opportunities for women to achieve parity," said Nancy Thornborrow, professor of economics and director of the MBA program. "It's logical for a women's college in the 21st century to be moving into professional programs that are of interest to women."

Mills' 3-year-old MBA program currently has 23 students. Lokey's gift will allow the college to expand to accommodate 100 students. It will be known as the Lorry I. Lokey School of Business, Thornborrow said. While Mills' undergraduate program is strictly for women, the graduate programs are coed, though there aren't any men in the MBA program at this time.

At UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, by contrast, just 27 percent of the 240 full-time MBA students are women.

While it's possible to get a traditional two-year MBA at Mills, the most popular option is to graduate with both a baccalaureate degree and an MBA in five years instead of spending four years as an undergraduate and then two years as a graduate student.

That truncated schedule, Thornborrow said, makes the program better suited for many women. Business schools -- such as Haas --often want their students to work for five years before getting their MBA. For many women that's difficult, not just because they may want to start families, but because it's harder for women to get good jobs in business, Thornborrow said.

"If you come out of college with both a graduate degree and an MBA you're more employable and you can move ahead more quickly in the work world."

Mills also offers classes of 15 to 20 students and courses that appeal especially to women, such as one in nonprofit management.

Other Bay Area schools offering graduate business degrees include Stanford Graduate School of Business, Cal State Hayward, St. Mary's College of California and John F. Kennedy University.

The demand for graduate business education is growing, so there's more than enough room for Mills to expand its program, said Andrew Shogan, associate dean for instruction at UC Berkeley's Haas school. People in the biosciences, health care and other fields increasingly want to know more about business and earn dual degrees, he said.

"The Bay Area is underserved in terms of management education," he said. "There's certainly room for more high-quality programs."

Lokey's $10 million gift brings the college's Sesquicentennial Campaign, begun in 2000, to $98 million, just shy of the $100 million goal it set for the end of this year.