Loyola Marymount University (LMU), a leading Catholic university in Los Angeles, is known for its academic excellence, commitment to social justice, and stunningly beautiful campus. That beauty creates high demand. With over 11,000 students on its main campus, LMU’s University Events department is a busy operation, managing more than 10,000 events a year.
For years, they managed their busy campus with a legacy system, 25Live. In 2022, LMU switched to Mazévo, and, in doing so, transformed its entire event management ecosystem. Kelly McDonald, Assistant Director of Event Scheduling, joined LMU just as the transition began and has been instrumental in shaping their new approach.
The story of LMU's success with Mazévo, which was the subject of a Mazévo Connect webinar titled “Campus Scheduling Deep Dive: Lessons From Loyola Marymount University,” is about time savings, user empowerment, and centralized coordination, and it provides a blueprint for any university struggling to manage campus-wide scheduling.
If you missed the session, this article summarizes the highlights.
The limitations of LMU’s previous processes were creating significant operational drag. Specifically, Kelly says the biggest challenge was the lack of accessibility.
"We did not have any students in the system whatsoever," she explains. This was a significant roadblock for groups and registered student organizations, which book rooms frequently. Event staff had to enter every student request manually, creating a workflow bottleneck.
LMU needed a modern, intuitive platform that could empower users while providing robust administrative oversight. They also needed a quick transition. Mazévo delivered on all fronts. "It took us about a month to transition," Kelly notes. The rapid implementation allowed them to get up and running without missing a beat.
The scale of LMU’s operation is impressive. They use Mazévo to manage:
To manage this complexity, LMU leverages Mazévo’s customization features. One of the most effective tools has been event statuses. The team created custom, color-coded statuses that allow them to see the nature of an event at a glance in the Event Book.
"We take advantage of all the colors that we can use for our statuses," Kelly says. They have unique statuses for athletics, internal events, and special film permits. This visual organization helps their team, including over 80 student workers, quickly understand an event's needs and which department is handling it, keeping reports clean and workflows clear.
The most significant philosophical shift for LMU was enabling students to request spaces themselves. This move eliminated the primary bottleneck of their old system, but it required new tools to ensure policies were followed.
Mazévo’s event questions and conditional approvals became the new guardrails. For example, if a requester indicates they will have catered food, they automatically receive an email with the catering department's policies. If they book a space that requires special approval, the request is automatically routed to the correct approver.
This automation extends to communication. LMU uses scheduled emails to send event reminders, policy information, and post-event surveys. "We found that some people were putting in their events a year in advance," Kelly says. A reminder sent two weeks beforehand prompts them to confirm or cancel, reducing no-shows and freeing up space. These automated workflows empower users to self-serve while ensuring the events team maintains control.
A key goal for LMU was to make Mazévo the master calendar for the entire campus. This meant integrating not only events, but also academic courses.
LMU’s Registrar’s office also uses Mazévo, employing its academic scheduling optimizer to place all classes. Critically, Mazévo features a two-way integration with Banner, the university’s student information system.
This ensures that course data and event data are available in the same system, providing a single source of information for all space utilization on campus. After a two-week quiet period at the start of each semester for class changes to settle, classrooms become available for event requests, maximizing the use of every available room.
After three years of managing a high-volume environment, Kelly has some helpful advice for other Mazévo users:
The move to Mazévo has fundamentally improved how events are managed at LMU. Approvals are faster, processes are more consistent, and staff spend far less time manually chasing down information.
Collaboration between departments has improved, and there is a high level of user satisfaction. Event planners, student requesters, and support staff are all working more efficiently within a single, transparent system.
For LMU, Mazévo is more than just a room booking tool. It’s a platform that creates structure, visibility, and trust across the entire university. Their success demonstrates what is possible when a powerful, modern system is combined with a thoughtful and strategic implementation.
If you have questions about how Mazévo can improve your scheduling operations, reach out.