Chart Your Course

International student-athletes gathered at Worldwide Terps’ Career Compass meeting on Wednesday to discuss navigating their career journeys away from their home countries. 

The event featured a presentation from the International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) office, a mental health Q&A and a panel of upperclassmen international student-athletes. All programming aimed to provide critical resources and strategies for international student-athletes to embark on their career paths with confidence. 

Student-athletes from multiple Maryland sports attended the event, including Jennessa Wolfe, a sophomore track and field athlete from Nova Scotia, Canada. Wolfe enjoyed learning tips related to job acquisition at one of the first Worldwide Terps events she attended. 

“Worldwide Terps is a really great resource for international students like us to understand certain processes of the states that we're not used to in our other countries,” Wolfe said. “Finding out I can’t just pick up a job like a normal U.S. citizen, things like that. It's really important.”

Worldwide Terps — a Maryland Made program — supports the international student-athlete experience through community building and educational sessions. 

The organization also assists international student-athletes with the transition to living and learning in the United States and offers professional and career development for post-graduation. 

Karla Elena Vázquez Setzer, a graduate student golfer from Tabasco, Mexico, is the current vice president of Worldwide Terps. She benefited greatly from the organization as an underclassmen transfer student and credits its former student leaders for encouraging her to attend meetings and get involved. Now, she hopes to maintain the same international student-athlete community she had when she first came to Maryland. 

“I think being a student-athlete is already hard, and doing it as an international, it's just twice as hard because you have to adjust to a new culture, new country, new friends, new language or same language at a different level,” Vázquez Setzer said. “I think every international student in the athletics department is a very strong individual because of the challenge that they are signing up for. I am glad that I have been able to help them because I received that help before.”

To plan this event, Vázquez Setzer and the Worldwide Terps executive board worked closely with the International Student-Athlete Working Group, which consists of members from Maryland Made, academics and compliance. They also invited a social worker from Maryland Athletics’ Clinical and Sport Psychology Program to speak, something Vázquez Setzer has worked to implement in more Worldwide Terps meetings. 

“We could tell you all of the things, what you have to do, how to do it, career development and everything,” she explained. “But if you're not okay as an individual, it's going to be very hard to pull it off.”

The event began with a presentation about work authorizations by Jody Heckman-Bose from ISSS. 

Students were then led in a mental health Q&A about adjusting to life in the U.S. Jackie Albanes, the licensed clinical social worker Vázquez Setzer helped bring on, offered tips for managing stress, including staying connected to home by contacting family regularly or practicing cooking dishes from their home countries. 

Before the meeting wrapped up with Maryland Made staff sharing upcoming career development events, upperclassmen attendees were invited to share their experiences. These older students advised their fellow international student-athletes to ease their adjustment to the U.S. Their advice included looking into internships early, starting conversations with other international student-athletes and making friends outside of athletics.

Alex Nitzl, a graduate student men’s soccer player from Munich, Germany, has been involved with Worldwide Terps since January 2021. During the upperclassmen panel, Nitzl discussed dealing with loneliness and isolation as a young adult in a new country and how that inhibits motivation to pursue a career away from home. 

Nitzl enjoys events like these and Worldwide Terps' more extensive support system because it offers a community of people with shared experiences. 

“When you come from a different country to a new place, and you don't know anybody, you may have heard of the culture, but you're not adjusted to it,” Nitzl said. “There are a lot of times where you can feel incredibly isolated, where you feel alone. Having something like Worldwide Terps, we might be from different countries, but we're all student-athletes and internationals. We go through the same things. You feel you have your sense of community, and you have people to go to, and they can come to you.”

After the event, Wolfe felt inspired by the discussion, especially the upperclassmen panel. She hopes to attend more Worldwide Terps events in the future. 

“I've never met with a lot of other student-athletes or international [student-athletes],” Wolfe said. “So knowing what I was feeling, like loneliness and [difficulty making] friends, it was really great to understand that others have a similar problem too and that I'm not alone, even when I'm feeling alone. I definitely will take their advice.”