The Fall 2026 semester will mark the beginning of the second year of a new pre-major advising system for non-Echols Scholars in the College of Arts and Sciences — Echols Scholars are students in an honors program who are exempt from many general education requirements, including the Engagements. In this new system, first-year students’ first quarter Engagements professors also serve as their advisor until students declare a major.
The new advising system was fully implemented at the start of the 2025-26 academic year, and partially implemented at the start of the 2024-25 academic year. Until 2024, students were randomly matched with faculty advisors for pre-major advising, and in previous coverage by The Cavalier Daily, students expressed that they felt a lack of support as they navigated specific academic questions and that advisors were unable to provide personalized guidance.
All Students are required to meet with their pre-major advisor in the fall and spring semesters to remove course registration holds, and they can book an appointment with their advisors on Stellic or by emailing them.
The Cavalier Daily spoke to and received statements from Creighton Coleman, assistant director of advising and College lecturer, Liza Flood, assistant director of course design and assistant Engagements professor, Gillet Rosenblith, assistant director of Engagements Cohorts and assistant professor, David Walsh, College advising fellow and lecturer, and Judy Giering, associate dean for undergraduate affairs, to hear how and why the advising system changed, and whether or not the new system is proving to be effective.
What are the Engagements?
The Engagements program is a set of four quarter-long courses for first-year College students that each focus on one of the program’s four pillars — Engaging Aesthetics, Empirical and Scientific Engagement, Engaging Differences and Ethical Engagements. The courses aim to “celebrate learning while introducing first-year students to the liberal arts and sciences,” and the courses are small in size and taught seminar-style by the College Fellows — a group of College faculty members who design the courses and ultimately teach the one they design.
Rising first-year students in the College had until June 15 to indicate their preferences for the Engagements courses and other College courses they are interested in on the pre-enrollment survey, which was located on the New Student Portal task list.
In a statement to The Cavalier Daily, Coleman wrote that the preferences are taken into account before students officially enroll in courses. He added that students were able to see their pre-enrolled courses on the Student Information System as of Tuesday, though advisor assignments will not be made until August.
Flood wrote in a statement to The Cavalier Daily that 30 to 40 new Engagements courses are designed each year. Flood added that creating new courses for each academic year allows students to engage in relevant topics and faculty to pursue their “academic curiosities.”
As for the overall goal of the Engagements program, Flood wrote that the program seeks to actively engage students in the learning process. Through small classes — no more than 35 students — Flood explained that the Engagements program fosters dialogue among peers and interaction with professors across the College.
“In this way, we invite them into an intellectual community that every student belongs to once they arrive on Grounds,” Flood wrote. “The motivating questions of the four pillars are relevant to any major a student might choose to pursue. This is why we call our courses ‘pre-disciplinary.’”
Students can further tailor their Engagements experience by participating in the Engagements Cohorts program, in which a group of 20 or 35 students spend the academic year together and take Engagements classes focusing on one central theme.
In a statement to The Cavalier Daily, Rosenblith wrote that the Cohorts program began in the 2023-24 academic year with one cohort focusing on monuments and memorials. Rosenblith added that since the successful pilot year, the Cohort program has expanded each year.
“Cohort students know they will be together the whole year and can develop familiarity and friendships with each other in and outside of class. This allows for comfort within classroom conversations, which can be helpful for enabling students to talk to each other across differences of opinion,” Rosenblith wrote.
Additionally, Rosenblith wrote that students participating in the Cohorts program take a related field trip during the academic year, which allows students to experience their cohort theme in person and speak with professionals in the field.
According to Rosenblith, the four cohorts offered in the 2026-27 academic year are titled Democracy, U.Va., Landscapes of Memory and Powerful Voices. Students had the opportunity to apply to be a part of the Cohorts program through the pre-enrollment survey that was due June 15.
What can pre-major advisors help with?
In a statement to The Cavalier Daily, Walsh wrote that pre-major advisors for College students deal with a “fair amount” of major planning because of various major and program structures and their prerequisites. Pre-major advisors are paired with incoming first-year students to assist in course registration and make recommendations as the students navigate the University’s academic offerings.
Walsh wrote that declaring the economics major, for example, typically requires an “entire year’s worth” of planning after taking into consideration the type and number of different classes that can satisfy the same major requirement. Therefore, he emphasized that pre-major advisors “can and do provide some degree of major advising,” before students actually declare their major.
Walsh also wrote that College Advising Fellows — a fellow who serves as a pre-major advisor and who also teaches Engagements courses — do not serve as advisors once a student has declared a major because they do not work for individual departments and thus cannot make any decisions about whether enrolling for a class will fulfill a certain major’s requirements.
Once a major is declared — which College students must do by the end of their fourth semester — they are assigned major-specific advisors who are able to help students navigate course substitutions or exceptions for major requirements.
Why did pre-major advising change?
Until the 2024-25 academic year — the first phase of the Engagements and pre-major advising integration — students received a random match for a pre-major advisor.
The College began an “unprecedented evaluation” of the advising system in 2022, according to Coleman, though he did not specify the cause of this evaluation.
According to Coleman, the 2024-25 academic year served as the transition year for the College into the new system of pre-major advising. During that year, some of the College’s newly hired Advising Fellows both taught the Engagements and advised their students. As the College began hiring more Advising Fellows, Coleman wrote the College was able to fully integrate the system in the 2025-26 academic year, and Engagements professors also served as first-year students’ pre-major advisors.
Though Coleman did not specify the cause of the evaluation for the old advising system in 2022, Giering wrote that there were several issues that both students and advisors raised to the College over the former pre-major advising system.
“Advisors received little training yet were responsible for an extensive amount of knowledge about the College’s undergraduate experience and options available to students,” Giering wrote. “Frequently, the entirety of the advising interaction was a 15-minute meeting before course enrollment.”
Giering wrote that the College realized the advising model was not serving students “as well as it should” and began looking into a way to better support first-year students. Throughout the redesigning process, Giering explained the College prioritized the academic experience, substantial training for advisors and personalized guidance for each student.
Giering wrote the College concluded that the Engagements program was able to provide first-year students with a connection point between the curriculum of their Engagements course and regular engagement with their advisors.
“Speaking with students, we hear stories of how getting to know their advisor beyond a brief conversation resulted in more meaningful advice and direction and gave them someone to trust as they made important decisions about their future,” Giering wrote.
Giering also pointed to the increase in overall satisfaction with academic advising demonstrated by Student Experience in the Research University survey results — 64 percent of students reported overall satisfaction with advising in the 2022 SERU survey, which rose to 84 percent and 89 percent in the 2024-25 and 2025-26 SERU surveys, respectively. The SERU survey is an undergraduate census survey that asks “about a wide range of aspects, from academic skills through global engagement opportunities to civic engagement to financial considerations.”
How are these changes impacting students and advisors?
Natalie Nguyen, rising third-year College student, took the Engagements during the 2024-25 academic year before the new advising program was fully integrated. She was randomly assigned an advisor during her first year, but she said her advisor was able to answer a “majority, if not all” of her major-related questions.
Nguyen said her advisor was in the history department, so they were able to provide “basic” advice about the pre-law track. However, Nguyen said if she were looking for pre-law advice, she would prefer to ask her pre-professional fraternity.
In her first year, Nguyen said her advising meetings leaned on the “longer side,” but during her second year — with the same advisor — the meetings usually lasted less than five minutes.
For first-year students moving forward, Nguyen said she believes the advising change will be beneficial.
“Since [a] majority of students should be picking Engagements that they’re interested in … the Engagements professors can help them in whatever area they want [to study],” Nguyen said.
George Kamberis, rising second-year College student, said he appreciated having his first quarter Engagements professor also serve as his advisor when he was initially adjusting to college. However, Kamberis said because he did not take another class with his advisor after the first quarter, he began to feel disconnected from his advisor.
According to Kamberis, his advising meetings never lasted beyond three minutes, and he also never met with his advisor outside of required meetings.
“The small relationship I had never got better — it kind of just got worse,” Kamberis said. “It made the already short advising meetings feel more of just a formality rather than trying to connect with an advisor and get advice.”
Kamberis, also a pre-med student, said he eventually turned to upperclassmen students for advice about pre-med coursework and requirements. He said he felt like his advisor was not equipped to answer specific questions about the track.
“I used [upperclassmen’s] experiences to help guide mine, especially when it [came] to [choosing] classes or just what I should expect my next couple of years to look like,” Kamberis said. “[My advisor] didn’t really have the resources to help me beyond just making sure I had a balanced schedule.”
Kamberis said another reason he felt disconnected from his advisor was the difference in field of interest. His advisor was in the creative writing field, which Kamberis said he felt did not align with his intended pre-med track.
Additionally, Kamberis said his detached feeling was due in part to his first quarter Engagements class fulfilling the Ethical Engagements pillar. If the class had instead fulfilled the Empirical and Scientific Engagement pillar, Kamberis said there might have been more overlap between his advisor’s field of interest and his own.
Speaking on the effectiveness of the new system, Walsh wrote that he believes the pre-major advising change is “excellent” and hopes it can be a model for other universities.
Walsh pointed to Harvard College, where the school announced moving to a group advising model in April due to recent budget shortfalls and layoffs. He called this situation “grim” and expressed his belief that the College’s new advising system is exemplary.
“U.Va. is doing something very different than many of its peer institutions,” Walsh wrote. “Rather than instituting layoffs and cuts in undergraduate education, U.Va. has invested substantial resources in undergraduate education, and I think [the] Engagements and the advising program are superb examples of this.”
Melody Yuan is a staff writer on the news desk. She is a second-year student in the College studying Economics and Statistics from Richmond, Va.
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