Amid University-wide budget cuts, officials halted the School of Business’ peer mentorship program for the fall semester — another hit to student resources that mentors say leaves underclassmen without career guidance.

GWSB officials paused the F. David Fowler Career Center’s student coordinator program, which pairs underclassmen with paid upperclassmen mentors to help with resumes and cover letters, with plans to resume the program in a reduced capacity in the spring. Cassin Dyson, the center’s executive director, attributed the decision to University-wide budget cuts, which have set off a series of reductions across campus operations and resources since the start of fiscal year 2026.

Students and former coordinators said pausing the program deprives underclassmen of a valuable resource, limiting their ability to seek guidance from mentors with shared business interests and career goals.

Dyson, who joined GWSB in January, said officials paused the program this semester as GW works to reduce expenses, with plans to reinstate it in the spring. He added that officials did not terminate the program and “at no point” indicated such to coordinators or students.

“The decision was made after multiple conversations with senior leaders within GWSB,” Dyson said. “It was handled with the utmost sensitivity and was a painstaking process.”

Officials announced in April they would cut the University’s expense budget by 3 percent during fiscal year 2026 to combat a yearslong structural deficit and broader higher education challenges and announced additional measures in July, including a hiring freeze. GW in September laid off 43 staff members across five schools and divisions, including “several” within GWSB, with most of the school’s layoffs coming from the undergraduate and graduate program offices.

As part of these broader budget reductions, officials closed District House and University Student Center dining options on weekends in September, ended walk-in hours for campus Counseling and Psychological Services in October and slashed Mount Vernon Express shuttle service by 50 percent at the start of the academic year.

Dyson said GWSB is reassessing the center’s resources to “innovate” the program and noted that, despite the pause, the Fowler Center has reached or engaged “significantly more” students than it did last year.

Mitchell Sozio, a senior studying business and a student coordinator last year, said Dyson initially told coordinators in July officials were pausing the decade-old program — which employs 14 to 16 coordinators every year — for the fall semester due to “tough decisions” GW leaders had to make regarding the University’s budget.

Sozio said coordinators, led by then-junior Soleil Lech, met with Dyson in early August to discuss potentially continuing the program on a volunteer basis, with students not being paid for their work, to avoid changes to the program and allow it to continue despite budget cuts.

He said Dyson later reached back out to the coordinators at the end of October to announce the program would be returning in the spring at a “scaled-back capacity,” with officials hiring only four to five coordinators as compared to 14 to 16. He said despite having conversations with Dyson over the summer, the coordinators hit a “dead end” in trying to keep the program alive and unchanged.

“The program, according to the new director, was just not going to function in the same way as it had in the past decade that it had been operating,” Sozio said.

He said the program was helpful for students who felt lost and needed help starting the application process for jobs and internships. He said the program’s impact was “immense” because the student coordinators were more aware of the current job climate and evolving requirements — like understanding artificial intelligence — than GWSB’s professional career coaches, who have been out of school for longer.

“We’re the same generation,” Sozio said. “We do things differently. We understand how AI works. We understand how to connect with alumni who are closer in age to us. There’s a million things. How to prep for interviews as a Gen Z person, like these are just things that we were able to offer such great insight.”

GWSB and the University promoted the program heavily as a tool that should be used, Sozio said, as meetings were highly encouraged as students began their journey at the school. He said many coordinators visited GWSB Business Leader Foundations classes, which are required classes for first-year students that discuss the basics of how businesses function, to give guest lectures.

Sozio said he is excited about the program returning but thinks with the reduced capacity, the program will not “function efficiently” because of the higher student-to-coordinator ratio.

“These are students who have lives, who take a lot of classes, and it’s not just juggling, but when you put that pressure on just five students, I don’t know how it is going to function efficiently,” he said.

Lech, a senior studying international business, and the coordinator who Sozio said led the summer meetings with Dyson, said Fowler was a way for underclassmen who didn’t know many older students to get in contact with them if they needed advice. She said the program’s scaling back will limit the impact it will have on students and decrease the level of support coordinators will be able to provide.

“To only have five people would really cut down on responsibilities in what we’re able to do and how we’re able to help people,” Lech said. “So I’m kind of sad to see that.”

Lech said incoming junior coordinators suggested volunteering instead of receiving pay, but senior coordinators expressed concern that turning the role into a volunteer position, even temporarily, could undermine their ability to earn compensation in the future if they were willing to provide the service for free.

“You’re getting paid to do this, you need to put in that time and effort to do it correctly,” she said.

Abby Hackman, a GWSB alum who graduated in 2025 and served as a Fowler student coordinator for two years during her time at the school, said the coordinators allowed Fowlers’ professional career coaches to focus on upperclassmen. She said now that the program is paused, the professional coaches are “swamped,” and with fewer coordinators returning next semester, students will receive less personalized attention from coordinators and coaches.

“The more they have, the less direct attention they can give everyone,” Hackman said. “Whereas me, having maybe 10, 15 students I saw on a regular basis, could follow up with them and ask how things are going.”

Hackman said coordinators held over 430 meetings during the 2024-25 school year.

In addition to meeting with GWSB students, Hackman said student coordinators met with extracurricular clubs outside of GWSB that did not have access to a resource like Fowler. She said for these students, the coordinator’s advice was even more “impactful” as they provided students outside of GWSB a way to get structured career support.

“It was really helpful to kind of have us as people reach people outside of the business school to make sure that all GW students were equipped with these skills,” Hackman said.