Student Scheduling Crisis: Post-CACS Advising at CUA
Image courtesy of Patrick D. Lewis.
By Catalina Casarella
With the fall of the Center for Academic and Career Success, many first-year students at CUA have been struggling to find the basic, necessary information to enroll in the correct classes and to declare double majors, minors, and certificates. Between the elimination of advisors in the Center for Academic and Career Success (CACS) and the dramatic restructuring of schools, students throughout the student body are struggling to find answers to essential questions, which puts them at risk of not graduating.
Over the past two years, CUA has been struggling to make up a deficit of a $30 million debt through various financial strategies. One of the choices that the university made last year was to overhaul the Center for Academic and Career Success (CACS) and diminish its role to that of purely career support.
On January 30, 2025, the Office of the President informed students that “we are returning all academic advising responsibilities to our faculty members, building on the foundation the Center for Academic and Career Success has fostered since 2018.”
This means that students would no longer have a designated CACS advisor whose job is solely to support students throughout their academic career. Instead, full-time professors, who are already teaching a complete course load, conducting research, and pursuing publications, are now being asked to advise students in areas beyond major-specific issues, such as fulfilling the liberal arts requirements, course scheduling, secondary majors, minors, and certificates, and much broader college questions that CACS advisors were specifically trained to support. Professors thrust into this role do not have the access, training, or support they need to be able to answer many of the students’ questions. This leaves students to figure out their academic plan largely on their own.
Particularly when it comes to interdepartmental issues, CACS was an essential liaison for students, if only to point a student to the correct department or professor. Without this third-party point of contact, many first-year students are struggling to know who they are supposed to contact about issues not pertaining to their major, with the restructuring of schools further exacerbating these issues.
Junior Orientation Advisor and studio art minor, Makeda Dukes, described conversations with first-year students who wanted to declare art majors or minors but did not know who to contact. Multiple students came to her asking questions about advising, which she was not fully able to answer. In the restructuring of spring 2025, the art department was moved out of the Rome School of Music, Art, and Drama—now a subdivision of the newly-formed College of Arts and Sciences—into the Crough School of Architecture (now named the “College of Architecture and Allied Arts”). The restructuring led to students having no idea who to contact and faculty in the School of Architecture having no information on the art department, creating a difficult path for students to find who to contact in the now diminished art department.
Sophomore Orientation Advisor and politics major Griffin Cappiello had a similar experience with his orientees: “In my experience as an Orientation Advisor, I found first-years in my group struggled to get in contact with their faculty advisors. I had to play advisor.”
This makes it incredibly difficult for students to find the classes they need to be on track for graduation, especially for those who want to double major. First-years who have questions about, for instance, secondary majors, do not have someone to contact, and as Cappiello stated, “general major advisors can’t help with that.”
This issue is not isolated to first-year students. Many upperclassmen have also had issues contacting advisors and even enrolling in required classes as the recent restructuring led to the elimination of both classes and professors.
Dukes, who is a junior Media and Communications major, was told to retake a class which she already passed because the restructuring of the media department led to changes in requirements when it was combined with the Global Studies department. Dukes is still unsure whether this course is necessary for her graduation, but in the confusion, she had to choose to sacrifice three credits to a course she had already completed because this restructuring has left her without answers.
Reilly Gaitens, a senior psychology major and criminology minor, was unable to complete two entirely separate minors. The restructuring left her without any possible courses to take for the Health, Society, and Policy minor in the sociology department, which Gaitens described as “unofficially eliminated.” It still exists on paper for students to discover, but the school will no longer be offering the courses necessary to complete it. For her art history minor, she faced a similar issue. In the restructuring of the Rome School, the minor was completely eliminated, and despite university assurances that anyone in programs being eliminated would be able to complete their programs, enough necessary classes are no longer offered for Gaitens to complete the minor.
Senior politics and pre-law major MaggieMae Dethlefsen has also run into issues in attempting to complete a social work minor. She has been forced to jump through many loopholes and take an asynchronous graduate class in the spring of her senior year simply to complete the final requirement for her minor, since the courses the minor requires are not being offered. She is facing a similar issue with the pre-law certificate, one of the largest certificate programs on campus, as the professors who offered the correct courses were let go in the restructuring process. To complete her certificate, she had to get special approval for a course not originally associated with the pre-law program to count so that she could graduate on time with a certificate toward which she has spent the past 4 years working.
There is an absurdity to a university which cannot even provide its students with the necessary advising to declare a major, and an injustice in academic programs that require courses that are no longer being offered. The university is failing its upperclassmen, who ought to be able to graduate with programs towards which they have been working. Instead, they are drowning in the chaos of professors being let go and programs ceasing to exist. For many students, this drama has threatened their graduation dates; they must retake entire courses due to the administrative confusion or simply accept that they will not graduate with the programs for which they came to this university. Meanwhile, first-years flounder without the necessary support to clarify the administrative mess they just stepped into. From orientation to graduation, there is ambiguity around what will end up on students’ degrees or if they will even be receiving them within the projected 4 years. The purpose of a university is to give students an education, but this university cannot even guarantee students the credit for the education they have been working towards.
