How University of South Florida MUMA College of Business saved over 180+ Hours and Increased Student Engagement

Challenge 

University of South Florida MUMA College of Business (MUMA) had a small recruitment team, who were struggling to keep up with demand. Prospective students could only get in touch via email, resulting in hundreds of enquiries per day, placing significant pressure on the team. For Jennifer Maiolo Ferran, Assistant Director for Graduate Recruitment at MUMA, this was starting to impact both efficiency and the student experience. Ashley Lora, Program Manager at MUMA, shared that the team spent the first three hours of every day responding to emails, which was often worse on Monday mornings after students got in touch over the weekend, while also manually tracking more than 19,000 leads in a spreadsheet. 

It became clear that MUMA needed to adopt new technology to stay competitive with other business schools and improve how prospective student data was managed. After hearing about Unibuddy through a referral from a former Associate Dean, the team saw an opportunity to change their approach.

“Our time being tied up in emails was really affecting the way we do recruitment. We were constantly reacting, rather than having the bandwidth to be proactive,” said Ashley.

Solution

MUMA implemented Unibuddy Chat and Assistant and saw immediate value. Unibuddy Assistant significantly reduced email traffic by handling repetitive questions and directing prospective students to relevant content, freeing up the recruitment team’s time. Unibuddy Chat complemented this by connecting prospects with student Ambassadors, embedding peer-to-peer engagement into MUMA’s recruitment strategy.

“There are things we just aren’t experts in. Especially for international students, being able to reach out to our Ambassadors who have also gone through the visa process is incredibly helpful for them to hear real experiences,” says Jennifer.

Jennifer also noted the impact of faster responses, “prospects no longer need to wait 24-48 hours for an answer. Information is now right in the palm of their hands, and as instant gratification becomes more important as generations go on, this has definitely helped improve overall engagement in the process”.

Impact

In 2025 alone, the recruitment team saved over 180 hours as nearly 5,000 Assistant responses handled repetitive enquiries, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work. Prospective students engaged more meaningfully with 114,621 impressions and 2,164 conversations started throughout the year. 

“There has been a huge return on investment, not only in being able to have students work through the lifecycle of enrollment, but the time saved for the team, and time is money!” said Jennifer. Unibuddy has helped MUMA connect with students more organically, ensuring they feel like a valued part of the process rather than just another lead. “We’re now able to give students the level of service they deserve from a high-ranking business college.”

The impact has been visible beyond numbers. On orientation day, students were asked to raise their hands if they used Unibuddy during their enrollment journey, and the response was overwhelming. Even Monday mornings have changed, what used to be hours spent responding to weekend emails is now handled by Unibuddy Assistant and the Ambassadors, giving the team back their time and a smoother start to the week.