March 31, 2025 | Brittney J. Miller
The University of South Florida boasts around 800 students across its four MBA programs, which are geared toward full-time working professionals. A renewed emphasis is now intertwined with the curriculum: student wellness.
The programs started focusing on the mission during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Eric Douthirt, director of MBA Programs at the USF Muma College of Business. They’ve already made a range of changes with student health in mind.
Evening courses, for example, are now 47% shorter. Thanks to hybrid technology, students can consume online lectures on their own time and come to class for active discussions, case analyses and projects. The tweak allows them to return home earlier for a better school-life balance.
In the weekend program — the fastest-growing program in the school’s repertoire, jumping from 25 to 100 participants in two years — students are now only required to come to campus once a month. The remainder of the program is online and asynchronous.
“We still focus on rigor in our program, but we want our students to thrive and not just survive as full-time working professionals also in graduate school,” Douthirt says. “That’s the overall ethos of what we’ve been doing.”
The school has also poured more resources into its asynchronous online MBA program, which ties for No. 22 among the best online MBA programs in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report.
In years past, the program offered a two-day, in-person residency when students could network with each other on campus and visit with corporations. In 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it added a virtual residency program — a two-day online event complete with small group discussions, keynote speakers and various workshops. It also includes a case competition, when students work with clients to solve a business problem and then showcase that solution to judges.
Virtual attendees typically number between 150 and 175 students.
“We’ve looked at the competitive landscape. We don’t see any other business schools doing (a virtual residency) quite the way we do,” Douthirt says. “Even after COVID, we continue to do it virtually, just because we feel like we’ve kind of found some magic in the format that we use. And students love it.”
This year, an optional in-person version also will be offered.