Chart Your Course – University of Maryland Athletics

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.”