What will students and faculty do now that the Miami Art Institute is officially closed?

One minute, the students at Miami's Art Institute were studying and working on school projects. The next, their whole lives were turned upside down by a single email.

Faculty member Judith King tells us everybody found out at the same time on Friday.

Students, faculty, and even administration — all blindsided by the sudden closure of the Miami International University of Art & Design.

“No one that I know of in any of those positions had any inkling that this was going to happen,” said King.

The email, which was sent on Sept. 22, reads in part: “All future classes have been cancelled and all campuses will close permanently on September 30, 2023."

Given just eight days to figure out what their next steps are, many students were left feeling frustrated and confused.

“It’s kind of like fight or flight," said fashion design student Zechariah Singh.

So what now? For so many students in the middle of completing their degrees, the email left them desperate to figure out the next step in their academic careers.

"We kind of built our whole lives around going to this school," said Singh. "We thought we were secure.”

Unlike most students at the school, Singh is feeling some security after he says he just completed his Associate’s degree with the institute earlier this week.

“I was going for the bachelor’s, but I switched at the last second," he says. "So Thursday was my last day, thank God. And then Friday I got the news."

But many of his classmates were left scrambling over their academic futures.

"I’ve just been freelancing, but a lot of my classmates are looking for other schools and trying to figure things out with student visas.”

For international students, the timing of the closure makes things especially complicated as they worry about finding ways to maintain their student visas.

King points out that the Art Institutes are on the quarter system, which just ended. Meanwhile, many of the other nearby universities are on the semester system, which just began in the middle of last month.

Amid the chaos, King says faculty members have been trying to find their students places with other universities.

“We are working directly with other schools to make that happen," she says. "And that has been our main emphasis since Friday as far as the faculty goes.”

However, students aren’t the only ones left figuring out their next steps.

“A lot of the faculty didn’t know, which was surprising to me," said Singh. "They’re part of the school system just as much as we are and they depend on it like we do.”

While the school's closure left students struggling to figure out the next step in their academic future, it also left an entire faculty of teachers and staff out of a job.

“I will probably retire at this point," said King. "A lot of the faculty does not have that luxury and they will be looking for jobs immediately.”

The future is still so uncertain for so many. But for students like Zechariah, their dreams are still very much alive.

“I don’t know what I’ll do in the future or if I’ll go back to school," he says. "But for now, I’m being as creative as I can, as much as I can.”