Spotlight On: Saby Mitra, Dean, University of Florida, Warrington College of Business

Key points:

• • UF’s Warrington College of Business is expanding into Jacksonville and Miami to strengthen workforce and industry connections.
• • AI and experiential learning are becoming central to business education at UF.
• • Saby Mitra says global exposure and soft skills remain critical for future business leaders.

May 2026 — Invest: spoke with Saby Mitra, Dean of the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida about the college’s expansion into Jacksonville and Miami, AI’s role in business education, and the value of experiential learning. “It’s a balance between accessibility and quality,” Mitra said.

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What changes or milestones have had the most influence on the Warrington College of Business over the past year?

There are two things that might be of interest to your readers. The first is that the University of Florida, along with the Warrington College of Business, is opening a new campus in Jacksonville. Warrington is also establishing a presence in downtown Miami.

Those are incredible opportunities for us. We are the flagship land-grant university in the state of Florida, which is the third-largest state in the country, and we are committed to workforce development across the state. That is part of our mission as a public land-grant university.

Agriculture remains important to Florida, but the economy has moved far beyond that. A business school plays an important role in workforce development in a diverse state like Florida.

UF is among the best in the country when it comes to students and faculty. If you look at our faculty and measure them on any of the metrics faculty are measured on, we are at the top of the list among the Association of American Universities. We also have amazing students, and a tuition of about $6,000 a year for in-state students, which is one of the lowest in the United States.

One limiting factor was that while Gainesville is a lovely college town, it is not the best place to interface with businesses. Our presence in Jacksonville and Miami opens doors for that interaction.

In Jacksonville, we are starting with two programs. One is an MS in Management focused on AI and analytics, and the other is a professional MBA for working professionals. In Miami, we are moving our professional MBA program to downtown Miami, in the financial center of the city.

The second major area of focus for us is artificial intelligence across the curriculum. UF had a head start with a gift of a supercomputer from Chris Malachowsky in 2020, one of the co-founders of NVIDIA and a UF alumnus. It is one of the fastest supercomputers in higher education, and the state has also provided significant additional funding to support our AI initiative.

As a result, the university has hired 100 new faculty focused on the application of AI in diverse areas, and the business school has hired 11 new faculty, with more hiring underway, focused on the application of AI in business. Our faculty have a lot of expertise in AI applications in business, and we are working to bring that expertise to the entire curriculum.

How will the Jacksonville and Miami locations shape students’ interaction with businesses and real-world projects?

Jacksonville and Miami will benefit tremendously from the presence of UF and the Warrington College of Business, and we will benefit tremendously from being there. Florida is a business-friendly state, and there is population movement to the state. Having a top-ranked MBA program and a top-ranked university in those locations makes them even more attractive to working professionals and to businesses that may relocate to Florida because of the availability of a trained workforce. It is a two-way street.

Experiential learning is also very important in business education. One trend we are seeing with generative AI is that people will become more productive, which may mean that companies require fewer entry-level hires. That is a significant concern, because if there are fewer entry-level hires, where will the next generation of managers come from?

We have taken a four-pronged approach to the problem. The first is AI across the curriculum —  giving students the ability to use and understand AI tools in the context of their work. If they are in marketing, auditing, supply chain, or finance, they need to know what AI-based tools are available today, how they are evolving, and how to use them in the context of their work.

The second component of our approach are career-focused minors and combined BS/MS degrees. Career-focused minors are three or four courses in a particular industry domain that give students an edge in the workplace. For example, we have one in wealth management, which is a growing industry in Florida. We also have such minors in retailing, professional selling, and real estate, and we are establishing new ones in consulting and insurance. Combined BS/MS degrees also provide additional skills in a specific domain. 

The third component of our approach is leadership and professional development. Soft skills are not going to be automated through AI. They are uniquely human. In our undergraduate program, we now require six credits focused on communication skills, career search, professional skills and leadership skills. There is also a required internship, and many of our students participate in study abroad programs.

The final component of our approach focuses on experiential opportunities. We want students to work on real-world projects while they are in school so they can take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to real situations. Jacksonville and Miami will play a very important role in our ability to interface with industry and provide experiential opportunities going forward.

What role does global experience play for students in today’s business environment?

We have one of the most robust study-abroad programs among UF colleges. A large percentage of our students participate in study-abroad programs. Some go to a partner university for a semester, while others participate in shorter programs of two weeks or one month. In these programs, we include cultural activities where students interact with people from that location and with students at partner universities. Some also have an experiential component where they do a project with a local company. By immersing students in the work culture of that location, they get a different type of learning than they would get by going to the same location as tourists.

This learning is important because the world is globalized. Recent supply chain disruptions during COVID drove home how global our supply chains are. They are complex as well. It is not just about importing finished products. Sometimes you are importing raw materials and semi-finished products, finishing them here, and taking them to another location to sell. Working in global teams is important and will be even more important in the future.

In the past, most students have gone to locations that they are already familiar with, such as Western Europe. But we are now opening more programs in Asia and South America, and we want to increase the number of such locations, especially in emerging markets. While we must be careful because of safety considerations for any location our students travel to, the learning is even greater when students go to a place that is unfamiliar.

Students get hired for hard skills, but even during the interview process and certainly after they join a company, soft skills become very important. The important work people do is not done alone; it is done as part of a team. Study abroad programs improve their ability to work effectively in global teams.

How is Warrington aligning its programs with business needs and building partnerships with companies?

If I focus on Jacksonville, the two programs we are moving there are both working professional programs. They are targeted at students who are working full-time and will take classes on weekends and evenings. These programs provide a natural link to companies in the region.

One of the planned programs in Jacksonville is an MS in Management with a focus on AI. When I say focus on AI, I do not mean the technical side of AI. The program is about what professionals can do with AI to improve customer service, improve profitability, reduce costs, and create value.

That program includes a five-course sequence focused on applications in supply chain, marketing, auditing, finance, and other areas. There is also a course on managing AI deployment – where should AI be used in the company, where will it have the biggest impact, and how should the deployment of the technology across the organization be managed.

The course sequence came from interviews and focus groups with industry professionals, consulting companies, our alumni, and organizations across the country. Their input drives our curriculum. We also have an active advisory board with about 36 members, including CEOs and chief financial officers from large and smaller corporations in Florida and elsewhere. They are part of our effort to make our curriculum more relevant.

The second way we interact with companies is through their recruiting of our students. We have a dedicated career services office in the business school that brings in companies and coaches students to find the right opportunities. Many of our students tend to stay in Florida, particularly in Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando, and we play an important role in workforce development in the state.

Another exciting area is building research partnerships. We have faculty with expertise in AI and analytics, but what they do not always have is the data. Companies, especially small and medium-sized companies, have the data and can benefit from our expertise. Our faculty benefit from access to data for their research, and companies benefit from the insights generated. We have piloted this with a few companies in South Florida. We hope to expand that to Jacksonville as well.

We also do similar work with student projects. Students are given an AI or analytics-related problem, access to the data, and then they work on it for a semester before presenting their findings. That has been another successful model of interaction with companies.

Want more? Read the Invest: Jacksonville report.