INTERNATIONAL STUDENT-ATHLETES' AGENCY, AUTHORSHIP, AND VOICE AT U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT-ATHLETES' AGENCY, AUTHORSHIP, AND VOICE AT

U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

International student-athletes in the United States are at the intersection of two thoroughly

researched identity groups: international students and collegiate student-athletes.

International student research primarily highlights students’ acculturation processes upon their

arrival in the US, and collegiate student-athlete research largely addresses students’ transitions

out of college athletics. Thus, the following qualitative research contributes to the literature on

international student-athletes' perceptions of their experiences at U.S. higher education

institutions, with the data having been captured while the collaborators were still actively enrolled

as international student-athletes.

Research on international student-athletes' understandings and perceptions of their

developmental journeys during their college years explores the vortex of personal change that

international student-athletes are pulled into when they first arrive on their college campuses:

how they perceive their own growth from the time they adopt their identities as international

student-athletes to the time they graduate and return to their home countries as veterans of college

athletics. This project upheld the value of international student-athletes’ lived experiences by

sharing collaborators’ first-hand memories and using their perceptions of their

growth as a baseline for understanding how well their institutions served them.

Because the research was bounded by international student-athletes’ time in the United

States as both international students and student-athletes, the data was intrinsically interwoven

with collaborators’ experiences with teammates, coaches, university faculty and staff, and the

surrounding communities. This research provides practical insights for international student

support staff, college athletics staff, and other higher education professionals working with

international student-athletes to better serve this population of college students.

From a student affairs standpoint, practitioners cannot prepare international

studentathletes for their post-graduate lives in the same ways that they prepare American students

for their post-graduate lives. As is heavily discussed in the following chapters, most international

students are F-1 student visa holders, meaning they maintain non-immigrant status in the US.

Those students are expected to return to their home countries upon completing their academic

programs. Therefore, preparation for futures in the United States fails to serve international

students. Instead, international students are better served through preparation for the global

pathways they may pursue. An opportunity for student affairs practitioners is to help international

student-athletes reflect on their college careers, identify, and communicate which experiences

they have learned from, and strategize how they will translate those lessons into their post-

graduate lives.

Renewed Need for International Student-Athlete Research

International student-athletes face unique challenges because of the duality of their titular

identities. A recent, newsworthy example of these challenges is the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021

ruling in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, which decided that the National

Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) could not prevent student-athletes from profiting off

their name, image, and likeness (NIL). While more than 270,000 American student-athletes

competing on behalf of NCAA Division I and II institutions reap the benefits of this historic

ruling, more than 21,000 international student-athletes are excluded from this newfound benefit

of the student-athlete identity, as their student visa category denies them this type of work

authorization (NCAA, 2022a; U.S. Department of State, 2023). This ruling has raised looming

questions about amateurism, commercialization, and labor classifications for participating

student-athletes, but its relevance here is its exemplification of the insurmountable divide

between American student-athletes and international student-athletes. NIL has forced the

evolution of the American student-athlete experience, including enhanced programming on

financial literacy, networking, and career fair preparation, but it has had adverse impacts on the

inclusion, involvement, and development of international student-athletes, as this type of

programming yet again centers postgraduate success in America, particularly for those who are

born with work authorization. A greater understanding of the history of the NCAA is crucial to

understanding how the governing body’s evolution has continually impacted the academic and

athletic environment for today’s international student-athletes.

History

More than a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt tasked leaders of college athletics

to make football a safer sport, following the deaths of 18 college football players in 1904.

Accordingly, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) was created in

1906 to standardize the rules of college sports and protect its participants from physical harm.

The organization would rebrand as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910

(NCAA, 2021). On college campuses, intercollegiate sports had previously been governed by

student officers and funded by student fees, but between 1890 and 1910, these athletic

associations transformed in time with the NCAA. Professional staff members, including athletic

directors and coaches, were hired to replace student leaders (Thelin, 2019, p. 178).

Following World War II, Walter Byers became the national organization’s first full-time

executive director, and he would hold the position for 36 years. Under Byers, the NCAA

established standards for financial aid, recruitment, and academic eligibility, all of which were

intended to uphold amateurism. A system to investigate and enforce punishments for violations of

these standards quickly followed (NCAA, 2021). Early in Byers’ tenure, the NCAA gained

control of the live televising of football games, as well. Each of these developments are notable

because of their relevance to international student-athletes, then and now. Amateurism remains a

challenge for international student-athletes, whose home countries define sport amateurism and

professionalism very differently than the United States, posing challenges to international

student-athletes' eligibility to participate in NCAA-sanctioned sports. The televising of all sports,

but especially football, is central to the world’s recognition of the magnitude of college sports in

the United States. It affects branding and name recognition abroad, but it also affects the

recruitment of international student-athletes, as college athletics are organized and valued very

differently in other countries (Cole, 2019; Hanson, 2020; Love & Kim, 2011; Otto et al., 2020).

Concurrently, in the 1950s, more schools began offering athletic scholarships, allowing

the first international student-athletes to be recruited from Canada to participate in track and field

(Ridinger & Pastore, 2016; Stidwilll,1984). The recruitment of international student-athletes

increased exponentially that decade, to the point that the NCAA began to limit the number of

international student-athletes in 1961. The organization claimed that the age differences between

American student-athletes and international student-athletes put the former at a disadvantage, but

in 1970, a federal court ruled that the NCAA’s bylaw violated the equal protection clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment (Foo et al., 2015).

In 1973, the organization created divisions (I, II, and III), and age restrictions were

implemented at the Division I level. These age restrictions remain in place today, limiting the

number of U.S. institutions at which older student-athletes are eligible to compete – again posing

a barrier to international student-athletes' NCAA eligibility (Foo et al., 2015, p. 152). Throughout

the 1970s and 1980s, international student-athlete recruitment continued to gain popularity, and

U.S. institutions began establishing pipelines for these athletes. Bale (1991) noted that an

institution’s location and lack of prestige were barriers to recruiting domestic talent, forcing

institutions to look abroad. The trend was confirmed 20 years later by Love and Kim (2011). Bale

used Mississippi State University (MSU), a land grant institution in rural northeast Mississippi, as

an example. MSU, which is not conveniently located near any international airports, developed a

pipeline to bring runners from Nigeria to Starkville during the

‘70s and ‘80s, building the institution’s track roster and its international student population (1991,

p. 88).

While the first NCAA men’s track and field championship was held in 1921, the first

NCAA women’s championship for any sport was held in 1983 – eleven years after the passage of

Title IX (NCAA, 2021). This opened the door for female student-athletes, and approximately 40

years later, there are more than 1,800 female international student-athletes competing at Division

I institutions, compared to approximately 1,500 male international student-athletes (NCAA,

2022).

In 1983, five years before the end of Byers’ reign as executive director, the NCAA

Convention proposed heightened academic requirements for student-athletes (NCAA, 2021).

While significant research has shown that international student-athletes perform well

academically at U.S. institutions (Banjong, 2015; Dozier, 2001; Rienties et al., 2012), adjustment

to U.S. teaching methods and English as the primary language of instruction remain barriers to

international student-athlete academic success (Campbell & Li, 2008; Kim, 2006; Wu, 2015).

Whereas many of the previous NCAA developments challenged international student-athletes'

initial NCAA eligibility, this change added pressure to international student-athletes' continuing

eligibility.

Following his historic tenure, Byers was succeeded by Richard Schultz, former athletic

director at the University of Virginia. In his six years at the helm, Schultz’s primary contribution

to the NCAA was the establishment of the Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse in 1993, which

dedicated resources to the enforcement and investigation of the eligibility principles established

by Byers. Cedric Dempsey, former University of Arizona athletics director, replaced Schultz in

1994. External to the NCAA (during Dempsey’s term as executive director), the Student &

Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) was created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in

2003 to track all international students in the United States on F-1 and J-1 student visas (U.S.

Department of Education, 2009). To continue to recruit and host F-1 and J-1 international

student-athletes for NCAA competition, higher education institutions had to petition for and

maintain SEVP certification.

Dempsey’s directorship was followed by that of Myles Brand, former president of the

University of Indiana, in 2003 (NCAA, 2021). Notably, Brand marked the first shift in the

qualifications of NCAA leadership, as he was the first leader to come from a university president

appointment. He was also the organization's first leader to hold the title of NCAA president. In

2007, under Brand, the Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse upgraded to the Eligibility Center. This

change specifically reignited attention to how sport amateurism is defined in other countries, and

it implemented different fees for American and international students. It also required

international student-athletes to have their international transcripts translated to English, which

can be costly and compounds the immigration-related fees faced by international students

(NCAA, 2021).

Brand passed away in 2009, and Mark Emmert, former president of the University of

Washington, took over as the president of the NCAA in 2010. Emmert oversaw the organization’s

recovery from the 2007-2009 recession, its navigation through the COVID-19 pandemic from

2020 through 2022, and the passage of NIL legislation in 2021, despite his efforts to stop it

(NCAA, 2021). The pandemic had particularly harsh consequences on immigration, causing the

overall number of international students in the United States to drop 15 percent (Institute of

International Education, 2022d). Other COVID-induced changes, such as adjustments to

SAT/ACT requirements, availability of online English proficiency tests, and temporary allowance

for online classes and programs, dissolved historic barriers and reinvigorated international

interest in U.S. higher education.

Emmert resigned in March 2023, and former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker filled

his vacancy – marking the second shift in NCAA leadership qualifications from higher education

professionals to politicians (NCAA, 2021). The phenomenon of NCAA presidents’ varying

qualifications is further explored as part of the analysis of the NCAA’s organization and

governance. Overall, the turnover in NCAA leadership is worth noting because so much of the

organization’s history, relevant to international student-athletes' participation, occurred under

Byers. His five successors spent less total time in office than he ever did, yet few major

organizational changes occurred in the second half of the 20th century. It is within the context of

Emmert and Baker’s reigns that collaborators accrued their lived experiences as international

student-athletes in the United States.

While the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was founded in 1906 and

international student-athletes were first recruited in the 1950s, the strategic and purposive

inclusion of this demographic is in its infancy, given that the NCAA’s inaugural International

Student-Athlete Inclusion Think Tank was held in November 2021 (McGuire, 2022). The Think

Tank was planned after the passage of NIL legislation, seeking to bolster the inclusion of

international student-athletes in other legal ways. The virtual meeting included 50 studentathletes,

coaches, administrators, and faculty members representing 15 nationalities. While international

student-athletes have been associated with the NCAA for nearly 75 years, their inclusion,

involvement, and development are generally afterthoughts, falling behind the priorities of

American student-athletes. The systemic failure of the national organization to intentionally focus

on this demographic has inherently affected international student-athletes' equitable opportunities

for success within the U.S. higher education system.

Student Success

International student-athletes' belonging to the international student identity and the

collegiate student-athlete identity subjects them to a unique set of challenges deserving of special

attention in the student development discourse. Threatening their success, international students

face language barriers, cultural differences, and mental health challenges (Pierce et al., 2011;

Rodriguez, 2014). Compared to non-athletes, collegiate student-athletes generally have lower

academic performances, lower graduation rates, and higher attrition rates because of their athletic

commitments (Woodruff & Schallert, 2008). International student-athletes are subject to the

compound challenges associated with their titular identities, on top of those challenges associated

with their infinite other identities (Manwell et al., 2021, p. 525). Thus, to better understand the

obstacles facing this demographic, the deconstructed components of

“international student” and “student-athlete" are defined below, with attention paid to the

diversity and student success challenges within each group.

International Student Identity

Defining the Term

Enacted in 1924, the federal Immigration Act allowed foreign students to study at U.S.

universities (Stewart, 2013, p. 225). This act created the demographic category of “international

student” for U.S. colleges and universities, and immigrants coming to the United States as

international students did not count against foreign countries’ two percent immigration quota (p.

225). F-1 and J-1 student visas were named through the Mutual Educational and Cultural

Exchange Act of 1961, and they were meant to simplify and expedite the international student

visa process. Today’s requirement that international student visa holders demonstrate

nonimmigrant intent originated with the passage of this act (Stewart, 2013, p. 226).

Having the greatest impact on modern international student rules and regulations, the

Patriot Act was enacted by President George W. Bush in October 2001, following the 9/11

terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act would fund the Student & Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP),

which became operational in January 2003. Although colleges and universities are not the only

educational institutions that can be SEVP-certified, there are approximately 6,300 SEVPcertified

higher education institutions in the United States (U.S. Department of Education, 2009). Then,

through the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, President Bush supported a bill to

allow off-campus work authorization for international students. The bill failed in Congress due to

potential loopholes and anti-trust concerns, but the bill is often cited today for its relevance to the

legal inability of international student-athletes to pursue off-campus work opportunities (Stewart,

2013, pp. 227-228).

Widely adopted in the student affairs literature, Sato and Hodge (2009) operationally

defined an international student as one who self-declares as a non-immigrant to the host country.

That definition could include undocumented students (i.e., Dreamers), students who are

dependents of other visa holders (i.e., H-4 work visa dependents or J-2 student visa dependents),

or visa holders whose primary purpose is not education (i.e., R-1 religious visa holders or O-1

extraordinary ability visa holders). However, because this research project specifically focused on

international student-athletes holding a student visa, only those non-immigrants in the United

States on an F-1 or J-1 visa are referred to as international students.

Most international students in the United States are F-1 visa holders, as the F-1 visa is for

non-immigrants pursuing a full course of study at an accredited educational institution (U.S.

Department of State, 2023). The F-1 visa holder’s non-immigrant status, then, is the most

prominent structural difference between international student-athletes and American

studentathletes, as evidenced by the rift in NIL beneficiaries. While the inability of international

student-athletes to profit off NIL is just one example of a more complicated chasm, it speaks to

the gap between international students and student-athletes, attesting to the need to specifically

explore international student-athletes’ lived, dualistic experiences.

As established by the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (1961), F-1 visas

are only issued to individuals who can demonstrate to a consular officer that they intend to return

to their home country upon degree completion (U.S. Department of State, 2023). In their visa

interviews, prospective international student-athletes must articulate their plans to spend about

four years in America, attain a college degree, compete for a university, and navigate their host

country’s culture – all while intending to abandon that life at the end of their program (NCAA,

2022a; U.S. Department of State, 2023). This attribute of the international student experience is

significant because it affects the type of post-graduate life for which international students should

spend their college years preparing. A look at the major demographic trends of international

students also provides context for the types of students U.S. institutions are receiving, which is

essential to knowing how to support the postgraduate success of those students.

Diversity of International Students

Academic Level. International graduate student enrollment started to trend downward in

2016-2017 with 391,124 graduate students, and international undergraduate student enrollment

started to trend downward the following year, having peaked at 439,019 undergraduate students.

Thus, international student enrollment at both levels was already declining years ahead of the

COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020-2021, amidst vaccine requirements, travel bans, and lengthy visa

appointment wait times, international graduate student enrollment dropped to 329,272 (down

12.1% from the previous year), and international undergraduate student enrollment dropped to

359,787 (down 14.2% from the previous year). International undergraduate student enrollment

continued to drop in 2021-2022, with only 344,532 students, whereas international graduate

student enrollment increased 17%, totaling 385,097 that year (Institute of International Education,

2022b). In 2022-2023, there were 347,602 international graduate students (up 0.9%) and 467,027

international graduate students (up 21.3%) studying at U.S. institutions (Institute of

International Education, 2023a).

Figure 1

Open Doors International Student Data (Institute of International Education, 2023a)

Region of Origin. In 2021-2022, 30.6% of international students in the United States

were of Chinese origin, and 21% hailed from India. Beyond those two leading places of origin,

which accounted for 489,268 students, no other country of origin contributed more than 5% of the

international student population in the United States (Institute of International Education, 2022f).

Accordingly, the Institute of International Education (IIE) recognized the following regions of

origin for international students in 2021-2022:

•Oceania (5,994 students; 0.6% of total)

•North America (27,013 students; 2.8% of total)

•Africa/Sub-Saharan Region (42,514 students; 4.5% of total)

•Middle East and North Africa (53,104 students; 5.6% of total)

•Latin America and Caribbean (77,969 students; 8.2%of total)

•Europe (83,240 students; 8.8% of total)

•Asia (658,669 students; 69.4% of total). (IIE, 2022e)

This data gives context and significance to institution-specific international student enrollment

trends, particularly pertaining to the countries of origin of international student-athletes.

Based on country of origin, international student research (through IIE) has a drastically

different population than international student-athlete research (through the NCAA). In 2021,

only 170 total international student-athletes hailed from China and India (NCAA, 2022a). The top

three countries of origin for international student-athletes in the United States are Canada (3,035),

the United Kingdom (1,184), and Australia (821) (NCAA, 2022a). While Canada represents IIE’s

North American Region, and Australia and New Zealand represent IIE’s Oceania region, the

seven other countries on the NCAA’s list of the top 10 countries of origin for international

student-athletes belong to IIE’s Europe region (United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Sweden,

France, Netherlands, Italy) (Institute of International Education, 2022e). Such nuances are

important to consider during the review of existing literature and when making claims about the

generalizability of international student research.

Field of Study. Among international undergraduate and graduate students, math and

computer science is the most pursued field of study, with over 200,000 students (26.2%) studying

these fields in 2021-2022. Engineering boasted 188,194 students that year (24.6%), and business

and management drew 147,293 students (19.3%) to round out the top three fields. Of the 14 fields

of study recognized by the Institute of International Educators, 70.1% of international students

study in the three most popular fields (2022c). According to the NCAA’s 2022 Diploma

Dashboard, the top three fields of study for student-athletes are business (26%),

STEM fields (including math, computer science, and engineering) (16%), and social sciences

(15%) (Mikrut, 2022). Therefore, there is significant overlap between the fields of study of

international students and student-athletes.

International Student Success

Understanding where international students come from, what they study, and the level at

which they study is a baseline against which the same data, specifically pertaining to American

students and international student-athletes, can be compared. Recognizing those differences and

similarities can lead to questions about the diversity within international student subgroups. As

Gargano (2012) argued, international students cannot all be subjected to one collective theory of

student development because their realities are so different, even when they hail from the same

country or region. Grouping international student-athletes together is a limitation of nearly all the

existing literature but using more diversified development frameworks – including those that

center agency, authorship, and voice – in future research can help better present the nuances

within the international student-athlete population (Popp et al., 2009, p. 94).

Student-Athlete Identity

Defining the Term

Athletes who simultaneously participate in sport through their higher education institution

are widely referred to as “student-athletes” (Ivarsson et al., 2016; Stambulova, 2016;

Wyllemann et al., 2004). The term “student-athlete” has been contentious since it was coined by

NCAA executive director Walter Byers in the mid-20th century, as the term was intended to

prevent schools from giving compensation benefits to their athletes (Libit, 2021, para. 3).

According to Thelin (2019), compensating student-athletes would have created “serious fractures

within the structures and traditions of collegiate athletics as an educational student activity

predicated on amateurism” (p. 432). In his 1997 book, Byers expressed regret for his own phrase,

acknowledging that it denied “what was really happening behind the scenes” (p. 69). He

explained that the increase in scholarships for college athletes in the 1950s likely warranted

employee protections for athletes, given that they were receiving renumeration for their

participation in college athletics (Libit, 2021, para. 9). Granting employee protection to college

athletes would have been the demise of the NCAA’s amateurism model. More than 75 years later,

the NCAA is still having this exact conversation.

In 2011, civil rights historian Taylor Branch pushed himself to the helm of the case for

paying college athletes, publishing “The Shame of College Sports” in The Atlantic. Branch's

article reignited the war against the “student-athlete” terminology, and the phrase has since been

called an “offensive term” (Harry, 2023), a “myth” (Harris, 2021), an “insidious phrase”

(Kalman-Lamb et al., 2021b), and a “linguistic abomination” (Kalman-Lamb et al., 2021a). Yet,

when an updated version of the NCAA constitution was drafted in November 2021, the three

current college athletes on the 23-member panel insisted upon the use of the term “studentathlete”

(Libit, 2021, para. 4). As a result, the term appears 44 times in the current version of the

constitution, which was approved in January 2022.

Diversity of Student-Athletes

The NCAA’s inclusion website identifies five core areas of inclusion:

•Disability

•lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ)

•race/ethnicity

•women

•international. (2023b)

The organization does not publicize disability nor LGBTQ data. Rather, the organization provides

information on accommodations for student-athletes with disabilities, inclusion practices for

LGBTQ student-athletes, and policies for transgender student-athlete participation. Interestingly,

2022-2023 is the first academic year for which the Institute of International

Education has crowdsourced information on international students’ disability, and that

information will be published in its yearly report on international educational exchanges. The IIE

still does not collect data on international students’ sexuality.

Race/Ethnicity. Race/ethnicity data are annually self-reported by NCAA member

schools. The race/ethnicity categories include American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black,

Hispanic/Latino, International, Native American/Pacific Islander, two or more races, unknown,

and white (NCAA, 2022b). In 2021-2022, the “international” race/ethnicity category was tied for

the fourth-largest demographic, with 5% of the more than 500,000 NCAA student-athletes

identifying as “international.” That year, 62% of student-athletes across all divisions and

subdivisions identified as white, 16% identified as Black, 7% identified as Hispanic/Latino, 5%

identified as two or more races, and 5% identified as international (NCAA, 2022b).

The Office of Management and Budget identifies “U.S. Nonresident” as a category of race

but specifies “U.S. Nonresidents are to be reported separately in the places provided, rather than

in any of the racial/ethnic categories described above [American Indian or Alaska Native,

Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White]” (National

Center for Education Statistics, 2023). However, the 2020 U.S. Census did not offer “U.S.

Nonresident” as a category of race (using only American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or

African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White, and Some Other Race),

despite the census being applicable to citizens and noncitizens in the United States (Jensen,

2021). Thus, it is notable that the NCAA chooses to list “international” as a category of race in its

data collection practices, straying from the norms of the census.

Gender. Like race/ethnicity data, gender data is reported each year by NCAA member

institutions. In 2021-2022, 56% of student-athletes were male and 44% were female (NCAA,

2022b). This trend is not emulated across higher education; in spring 2022, approximately 40% of

higher education students were male and 60% were female (Berg et al., 2023).

A 2022 report published by the NCAA revealed the total numbers of male and female

student-athletes across each of the divisions over the past 10 years. Division I Football Bowl

Subdivision (FBS) Autonomy Five Conferences and Division I FBS Nonautonomy Conferences

have consistently had approximately 3,000 more male student-athletes than female

studentathletes. Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) institutions have had

approximately 7,000 more male student-athletes than female student-athletes, but Division I

subdivision institutions have had between1,000-2,000 more female student-athletes than male

student-athletes over the past 10 years (NCAA, 2022b). This is the only division of the NCAA in

which female student-athletes outnumber male student-athletes.

In sharp contrast, there are approximately 18,000 more male student-athletes than female

student-athletes at Division II institutions, and there are approximately 30,000 more male student-

athletes than female student-athletes at Division III institutions (NCAA, 2022b).

International. The NCAA sanctions 24 sports across three divisions, but tennis has more

international student-athletes than any other NCAA sport. In 2021, more than 63% of NCAA

Division I men’s tennis players were international (1,257 student-athletes from 92 countries), and

61% of NCAA Division I women’s tennis players were international (1,466 student-athletes from

91 countries) (NCAA, 2022a). That same year, NCAA Division I men’s golf teams reported 659

international student-athletes from 63 countries, and NCAA women’s golf teams included 761

international student-athletes from 66 countries. Division I men’s swim and dive featured 486

international student-athletes from 78 countries, and women’s swim and dive boasted 729

international student-athletes from 78 countries (NCAA, 2022a). Both the American student-

athletes and international student-athletes on these teams have different bicultural experiences

because of the international density of their athletic teams (Gomez et al., 2014).

International Student-Athlete Success

Between 1999 and 2020, the presence of international student-athletes across all three

NCAA divisions increased 283% (Swim et al., 2023). Scholars have identified many explanations

for the growth, including recruitment via social media, demand for diversified college student

populations, streamlined visa processes, success of past international studentathletes, and the

international exposure accompanying the commercialization of the NCAA

(Love & Kim, 2011; Cole, 2019; Hanson, 2020; Otto et al., 2020; Swim et al., 2023).

Growth is not necessarily correlated with equitable support systems for these international

student-athletes, but, in 2021, the NCAA’s International Student-Athlete Think Tank sought to

identify challenges facing international student-athletes, as well as potential campus-level and

national office-level solutions to these challenges (McGuire, 2022). Like the oft-cited challenges

facing international students, four stages of international student-athlete challenges were

identified: pre-arrival, first-year transitions, sustained support, and graduation preparation.

Pre-Arrival. Think Tank participants cited lack of knowledge on the U.S. higher

education system and NCAA structure, timeline and commitment for pre-college preparation, and

potential consequences of working with international recruiting agencies as challenges in the pre-

arrival stage. A proposed campus-level solution was to “ensure international student-athletes'

competency with language skills and academics and provide guidance on major selection in

advance” (NCAA International, 2021). One benefit of the COVID-19 pandemic was greater

accessibility to English language proficiency tests, given that in-person testing centers were

closed. The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) launched the IELTS

Indicator, which could be taken online from a student’s home (Hunter, 2021, para. 5). Similarly,

the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) offered an internet-based test for students

applying to English-speaking universities during the pandemic (Hunter, 2021, para. 13). Duolingo

is a third online testing option that gained traction during the pandemic. This test can be taken

anywhere, at any time, without an appointment (Hunter, 2021, para. 9). These changes exemplify

movement toward more accessible opportunities to gain and demonstrate English language

proficiency. National office-level solutions were to create a shared knowledge network for

prospective international student-athletes, allocate funds to facilitate access to immigration

expertise, and provide more resources for navigating recruitment agencies (NCAA International,

2021).

First-Year Transitions. While first-year transition experiences are critical to the retention

of all college students, international student-athletes are particularly vulnerable. A study by the

NCAA found that an astonishing 25% of international student-athletes transfer after their first

year, compared to 14% of American student-athletes (Ifill et al., 2022a, 2022b). According to

Think Tank participants, transition efforts designed for international studentathletes should focus

on cultural gaps, nutrition adjustments, and orientations to the campus and community.

Participants proposed comprehensive orientation programs, focusing on the social facets of both

campus and community. Participants also suggested training coaches on cultural sensitivity

(which could occur at the campus level or the national office level), maintaining a relationship

with the international services office on campus, and communicating to coaches and staff the

importance of international student-athletes' sense of belonging. According to the Think Tank

summary, intentional initiative efforts include mentorship programs, international studentathletes

clubs, strategic engagement with career fairs or recruiting companies, and cultural celebrations

for international student-athletes and their accomplishments (NCAA International, 2021).

Sustained Support. Sustained support for international student-athletes, as proposed by

the Think Tank participants, includes access to resources for mental health and financial

difficulties, as well as guidance for navigating immigration laws pertaining to NIL (NCAA

International, 2021). The latter would have to be a national office-level solution, but even the

NCAA is not the authority on immigration law. The NCAA would have to petition the

Department of Homeland Security for NIL-specific immigration law guidance.

Graduation Preparation. Identified challenges in the fourth stage of the international

student-athlete cycle include a lack of awareness and understanding of employment opportunities,

including pre-graduation internships/co-ops and post-graduation work authorization (NCAA

International, 2021). These challenges, as pointed out at the Think Tank, align with the need for

additional literature on international student-athletes' experiences during their college years, as

graduation preparation – along with any other intentional, audiencespecific student success

measure – for international students must look different than it does for American students. This

population is neither international student nor student-athlete. Rather, international student-

athletes are their own unique subpopulation deserving of special attention in the student

development discourse.

Organization, Governance, and Policy Governance

External Perspective: NCAA

The evolving landscape of the NCAA is closely tied to the will of its leadership. At the

executive level, the NCAA has had five chief executives in a shorter time than its inaugural

executive director’s entire reign, and those chief executives are entering the role with more

widespread political power than ever before. Before his tenure with the NCAA, Byers was the

Big Ten Conference's assistant sports information director. He was a skilled communicator with

years of tangible college athletics experience (Weber, 2015, para. 4). When he took control of the

NCAA in the 1950s, it held little regulatory power. Its primary function was to plan and promote

national championship competitions (Thelin, 2019, p. 299).

As Thelin describes, there were two opposing realities that prevented the acceptance of a

national policy on student-athlete conduct and eligibility. Academically powerful institutions

without particularly problematic athletics programs denied an external group’s encroachment of

university policy. In contrast, athletically powerful institutions that capitalized upon the unspoken

academic and behavioral privileges of student-athletes struck down an external group’s desire to

enact law and order (Thelin, 2019, p. 299). Despite this, the NCAA grew more powerful than any

individual member conference, gaining the ability to enact and enforce legislation across all

NCAA member institutions. The NCAA now brands itself as a member-led organization because

its member institutions have the right to vote on legislation and compete in championships in

exchange for adherence to the organization's constitution and bylaws (NCAA, 2023a).

Byers’ two successors were plucked from athletic director positions, and the two after that

were former university presidents. Thus, the appointment of Charlie Baker, sixth and current

president of the NCAA, is a shift away from athletic and academic career qualifications. Prior to

serving as the Republican governor of Massachusetts, Baker was the Chief Executive Officer of a

nonprofit health benefits provider (NCAA, 2023c, para. 7). During his college years, he was a

men’s basketball student-athlete at Harvard, but he lacks any professional experience working in

higher education (Herszenhorn & Peña, 2022, para. 4). In an interview earlier this year, Baker

identified four items on his presidential agenda: rules on transgender athletes, gender equity, NIL

opportunities, and transfer rules (Sterling & Almasy, 2023, para. 5). While his legislative

background lends itself to expertise in NIL policymaking and even the governance of the transfer

portal, Governor Baker had been criticized for his distance from the challenges of higher

education institutions. As governor, Baker’s administration outlined a plan for bolstering racial

equity in higher education, working to improve college graduate rates among Black and Latinx

students by expanding early college programs and tuition rebates for graduates of community

colleges who went on to pursue degrees at four-year institutions (Schoenberg, 2021). He was

entrusted and deemed qualified to lead an organization that is expected to traverse transgender

athlete rules and gender equity challenges in the near future (The Boston Globe, 2014).

Internal Perspective: University

Just as the higher education institutions of the 1950s disagreed over the academic-athletic

balancing act, students, schools, and scholars of the 21st century argue about the purpose of higher

education. If higher education is a public good, then its research contributions and employment

opportunities are central to its purpose. Employment opportunities may refer to professional

pathways for graduates of higher education, or it may refer to the fulfillment of jobs that benefit

the public – the U.S. public. Thelin once remarked that college football itself “ought to be

regarded as a form of public service” (2019, p. 382). If higher education is a private good, then its

social advancement and personal prestige-building measures characterize its purpose. Again, is

social advancement meant to be afforded to all graduates of U.S. higher education institutions, or

only those graduates who hold citizenship or permanent residency in the United

States? An exploration of graduating international student-athletes’ next geographic steps spurs

questioning of how, if at all, U.S. higher education promotes social advancement in other

countries.

Regardless of its status as a public or private good, higher education has external

investors, such as the state and federal governments, that task it with pleasing its many

stakeholders and their diverse expectations pertaining to college athletics and beyond.

International student-athletes should also be considered stakeholders of higher education. While

they may receive athletic scholarships to fund their education, they are trading their athletic

abilities and brand-building capacities to their institutions. It is impossible to conclude whether

this is an equal trade, and it does not even begin to explore international student-athletes’ other

priorities as stakeholders, including the institution’s academic reputation and support services.

Thelin briefly broached the purpose of higher education relative to its athletics programs,

declaring that, “The most serious concern is that flagrant, sustained abuses in college sports

programs lead to the erosion of public faith in institutions of higher education” (Thelin &

Wiseman, 1989, p. 3). Admissions scandals, sex abuse scandals, and criminal investigations – all

pertaining specifically to NCAA student-athletes – consistently riddle the national news and

pique the attention of donors, alumni, and prospective students. If social media is to be used as a

recruiting tool for international student-athletes, the digital footprint of an institution should be

associated with athletic success, high graduation rates, and student satisfaction – not

universityaltering college sports scandals.

Higher education policy issues are another facet of U.S. institutions’ digital footprints,

although they are usually beyond the control of the institution. Interestingly, in the American

Association of State Colleges and Universities’ (AASCU) list of the top 10 higher education state

policy issues for 2020, college athletics was ranked seventh. The two areas of impending policy

concern were the newsworthy topics of sports betting (Leonardi, 2022) and college athlete

compensation: a fight that began in 2019 in California, which hosts more international students

than any other state in the country (“The architect of NIL legislation,” 2023) (Institute of

International Education, 2022a). When the AASCU released its list for 2021, which was meant to

identify higher education policy issues that state policymakers expected to face in 2021, college

athletics did not make the cut, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Alston v. NCAA being a June

2021 decision. College athletics was not even acknowledged by the AASCU as an honorable

mention, but “shifts in public opinion on higher education” was, with special attention to the

partisan divide between perceptions of higher education. This preceded Charlie Baker’s

appointment as NCAA president during December 2022.

University Reporting Lines

Within each university, there are two functional areas explicitly tied to the governance of

international student-athletes: the international services office and the athletic department. SEVP

certification and NCAA membership both require on-site staff members dedicated to those lines

of work. As suggested during the NCAA’s International Student-Athlete Think Tank, a working

relationship between the two areas is crucial to students’ success and the university’s cohesive

enforcement of policy (2021).

Every higher education institution certified to host F- and J-visa holders must have a

Designated School Official (DSO) and Responsible Office (RO), respectively. This individual’s

primary role is to maintain student records in the Student & Exchange Visitor Information System

(SEVIS): the database for the Student & Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). SEVP is used by

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track information about international

students, such as their travel to and from the United States, their physical addresses, and any

changes to their programs of study. SEVP is also used by U.S. Citizenship and

Immigration Services (USCIS) to regulate international students’ off-campus work

authorizations – one of the barriers to international student-athletes profiting off their NIL. Thus,

international services professionals on college campuses have well-defined reporting lines and

little room for interpretation of federal policy. While many DSOs and ROs are also tasked by

their universities with international student onboarding and programming, those responsibilities

are not outlined in the U.S. government’s descriptions of the roles.

In contrast, athletic departments operate on a more localized level. They are subject to the

regulations of the NCAA, but institutions are more often collaborating with their athletic

conference and its affiliates. The university’s athletic department falls under the university

president’s oversight, with the athletic director as the point of contact. Beyond the athletic

department, the NCAA requires each university to have a Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR)

who can be called upon for an “outside” perspective. The role of the FAR has been criticized

because the FAR does not actually have to be a faculty member. In fact, the athletic director can

serve as the FAR, thus undermining the intended objectivity of a FAR from outside the

department (Munger, 2014, p. 63). Still, there exists on the localized level of athletic departments

the opportunity to strategically amplify agency, authorship, and voice of international

studentathletes.

Related Policies

In October 2022, the D.C. circuit upheld the legality of optional practical training (OPT),

a form of post-graduate work authorization for international students (Jackson Lewis P.C., 2022).

The Washington Alliance of Technical Workers (WashTech) had argued for eight years that the

Department of Homeland Security did not have the authority to authorize employment for

nonimmigrants. In its explanation, the three-judge panel weighed the time limitations and

conditions of OPT against the economic benefits of bringing international students to the United

States, incentivized in part by their opportunity to gain practical work experience upon program

completion (Jackson Lewis P.C., 2022).

For context, in 2022, Washington hosted 21,144 international students, ranking 13th in the

United States (Institute of International Education, 2022a). The estimated total expenditure for

those students was $739,150,660. California, which hosted the most international students in the

United States with 134,043, had an estimated international student expenditure of

$5,439,664,890. Even Alaska, which ranks 52nd (behind Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin

Islands), hosted 301 international students and had an estimated expenditure of $9,684,211

(Institute of International Education, 2022a). International students do more for the diversity of

their campuses than their campuses could ever do for them, and they bring in billions of dollars

every year. These are the trade-offs for allowing them one year of post-graduate work

authorization.

Impacts

Bolman and Deal’s (1991) four-frame model for analyzing organizational issues can be

used to decipher the impacts of organization, governance, and policy on international

studentathletes. The model was designed for leaders to approach issues within their organizations,

but its relevance to this research project is its central idea that each frame offers a distinct

perspective. Viewing any situation through just one frame risks ignorance and ineffective

decision-making. A goal of this research is to present multi-dimensional perspectives through

collaborators’ portrayals of their lived experiences, and the Bolman and Deal model can help

maintain that plurality.

The structural frame considers measurable goals and reporting lines, with the overarching

goal of being task oriented. Academic progress rate (APR) is the primary academic metric for

NCAA student-athletes, but retention and graduation are more broad metrics of all functional

areas and higher education institutions. The commitments of being an NCAA student-athlete

impose a combination of academic progress standards and limited opportunities for certain types

of experiential learning that aid student retention (Kolb, 1984). For example, international

student-athletes rarely study abroad (Watson-Hall, 2017). International student-athletes have

limited on-campus work authorization, and their athletic schedules can make it even more

difficult to find a suitable job that will accommodate their commitments. The same conundrum

poses a barrier to off-campus internship opportunities, though international student-athletes can

qualify for temporary work authorization if the internship is related to their major. These

structural barriers impede work and life experiences as well as legal pathways for international

student-athletes to earn money.

The human resources frame values people’s needs, such as the power and opportunity to

do well and achieve satisfaction (Bolman & Deal, 1991). Many of the solutions offered by Think

Tank participants speak to the human resources lens of an organization. If an institution were to

adopt some of the solutions proposed by the Think Tank to aid international student-athlete

success, the institution would be demonstrating its prioritization of student success beyond the

metrics outlined in the structural frame. Adopting solutions that were proposed by international

student-athletes, who know their own needs best, cuts out the prescriptive guesswork that

currently undermines international student-athlete support services.

The political frame recognizes conflicting agendas between people and groups, seeking

conflict resolution through this way of organizational analysis (Bolman & Deal, 1991). It is not

the desire of all higher education stakeholders to host and support international student-athletes.

As evidenced throughout the existing literature, international student-athletes are criticized for

having age advantages, for having more professional athletic histories through their countries’

sport club models, and for taking scholarships from American students. Institutions must account

for their stakeholders’ perceptions of their international student-athletes while still committing

their due diligence to the students who have travelled across the world to earn a degree while

wearing the institution’s name on their jersey.

The symbolic frame is built upon a sense of purpose and meaning (Bolman & Deal,

1991). This frame is predicated on an innate but pliable sense of purpose. A leader uses the

symbolic frame to define the organization’s sense of direction and give significance to its’

employees’ work. In the context of this research project, collaborators are the authors – and

therefore the leaders – of their own lives. They subconsciously apply the symbolic frame when

they decide what they want and how they are going to achieve it, moving toward establishing

their internal foundations. They define their own purpose and meaning through their work, but

their individual senses of purpose and meaning can be analyzed to understand the organization’s

purpose and meaning, addressing this project’s research questions. The symbolic frame can thus

be used to look at an institution's efforts and question which student demographics are truly

intended to be served, based on the senses of purpose and meaning that collaborators derive from

their institutions. This is the primary framework by which self-authorship can be rationalized as a

valuable tool for understanding international student-athletes' perceptions of their college

experiences.

Although each of the four frames offer a unique perspective on this research, the symbolic

and human resources frames are most relevant to the international student-athlete experience. The

symbolic frame is the lens through which, in this study, collaborators decided how to represent

their college experiences in only 10-15 media files and a 90-minute interview. It is a way to

understand how they chose to pursue the international student-athlete pathway and how, in turn,

that pathway has unequivocally impacted their postgraduate trajectory and their senses of self.

The human resources frame is employed through the discussion of results and recommendations

for practitioners, as this frame upholds the value of individuals’ needs. Through this project,

collaborators expressed how their institution served them and met their needs. Any gaps or

downfalls identified by collaborators are opportunities for institutional improvement, with respect

to equitable opportunities for all students to achieve satisfaction.

Overview of Project

Within the larger context of college athletics in the United States, this research project

used Hernández’s (2016) culturally sensitive revisions of Baxter Magolda’s (2001) theory of self-

authorship to explore international student-athletes’ perceptions of their personal identity

development at U.S. higher education institutions. The secondary theoretical frameworks of

agency (Biesta, 2008) and voice (Robinson & Taylor, 2007; Treacy & Leavy, 2021) supported the

use of photo elicitation research method (Copes et al., 2018; Crotty, 1998, p. 5). Guiding

questions probed the ways college experiences facilitate the movement of collaborators through

the phases of self-authorship, asking how collaborators’ experiences affect the way they make

meaning of the world, how their experiences shape their sense of self, and how their experiences

reveal the relationships they want with others. The answers to these questions were crucial to

understanding how international student-athletes transition from college to their postgraduate

endeavors, whatever and wherever they may be. I used photo elicitation interviews with media

representing collaborators’ experiences at U.S. higher education institutions to gain insight into

the following questions.

Research Questions

1. How do international student-athletes’ experiences at U.S. higher education

institutions shape their identities?

2. How do international student-athletes at U.S. higher education institutions

perceive their preparation for postgraduate success?

3. How do international student-athletes evaluate their personal changes throughout

their college careers?

In pursuit of answers to these questions, I wanted to learn how U.S. higher education

institutions are currently serving international student-athletes, who bring rich culture, worldly

perspectives, and athletic prowess to their institutions. What are those students getting in return?

Compared to their American student-athlete counterparts, are institutions preparing international

student-athletes for success? Success looks different for every student, but knowing that

international students hold non-immigrant status, how are institutions paving international

pathways for success?

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

Overview of International Student Identity Literature

International students are sojourners: “individuals who voluntarily choose to stay in a

place for a relatively short period of time often generalized as anywhere from six months to five

years” (Arthur, 2004; Ward et al., 2001, p. 142). While widely used theories of psychosocial

identity development (Chickering, 1969; Erikson, 1968) may apply to international students,

these theories are not specific to the international student identity. Racial and ethnic identity

development models (Cross, 1991; Evans et al., 2010; Helms, 1990) may also be applicable, but

they are not exclusive to international students, either. Gargano (2012) argued that it is futile to

develop collective identity theories for international students in higher education, saying that even

mutual nationality is not a strong enough commonality to understand how students construct

identities in their new, temporary environments.

Despite the shortage of student development theory literature specific to international

student identity, there is an abundance of research on the challenges facing international students,

much of which overlaps with the challenges facing international student-athletes. Examples

include research on culture shock (Oberg, 1960; Furnham & Bochner, 1986), unfamiliarity with

U.S. teaching practices (Campbell & Li, 2008; Kim, 2006; Wu, 2015), and proximity of support

networks (Smith & Khawaja, 2011; Zhang & Goodson, 2011).

Overview of Athletic Identity Literature

As previously mentioned, those who simultaneously participate in sport and higher

education are widely referred to as “student-athletes” (Ivarsson et al., 2016; Stambulova, 2016;

Wyllemann et al., 2004). Whereas the student identity refers to one’s role as a pupil of a higher

education institution, the athlete identity refers to one’s role as an individual or team competitor

(Brewer et al., 1993). Extensive research has been conducted on student-athlete transition from

sport at the time of athletic retirement, as this is the point at which student-athletes lose their

athletic identity but may retain their student identity (Grove et al., 1993; Reifsteck et al., 2016;

Smith & Hardin, 2018). In the case of international student-athletes, athletic retirement often

aligns with the end of their academic program: the time at which they are obligated to return to

their home countries. Because identity informs values, it is important to understand the identity

tied to student-athletes' roles, as this is the basis of their belonging to the population of interest

(Baxter Magolda, 2001).

In 1981, Anderson and Stone explored how sports can be a conduit for individuals to form

groups with others. Then, Abrams and Hogg (1988) employed social identity theory to understand

how one’s belonging to a social group affects the individual’s self-concept. One’s social identity

can then be used to understand how individuals relate to and interact with the world (Kim et al.,

2021; Kim et al., 2022). A positive correlation between social identity and social-psychological

health was found by Wann (2006) in a study of team sport college athletes. Namely, team

identification helped the athletes build social capital and transition to their campuses’ social scene

(Kim et al., 2021; Kim et al., 2022).

Patricia Adler and Peter Adler (1990) conducted a study on U.S. college basketball

players’ sense of self, finding that their athletic roles dominated how they could present

themselves (Wood, 1990). This phenomenon is known as role engulfment. While the premise of

role engulfment is relevant to this project on international student-athletes’ identities, the Adlers’

study is widely criticized for several reasons, from their positionality to their labeling of the

participants to their failure to question the larger systems at play (Guttmann, 1991). Additionally,

the participants in this study were not international, so the researchers’ findings that the athlete

identity dominated participants’ lives should not be translated to the international student-athlete

community. Adler and Adler (1987) are oft cited for saying student-athletes are at a heightened

risk for poor career decision-making because of their role engulfment (Burns et al., p. 161).

Crux of International Student-Athlete Literature

In the following sections, the existing literature on international student-athletes is

synthesized. It follows the life cycle of an international student-athlete, from their initial

recruitment and college selection decisions to the many challenges they face as college graduates.

International Student-Athlete Recruitment & Selection

Push-pull theory is used across the literature to understand why prospective international

students choose to become student-athletes at a particular U.S. higher education institution.

McMahon (1992) and Mazzarol and Soutar (2002) conducted studies based on push-pull theory,

and both projects found that a combination of push and pull factors influenced school selection

(Popp et al., 2011, p. 177). Scholars posited that both push and pull factors are influential in the

college selection process because international student-athletes come from systems in which

academics and athletics are not mixed (Chalip et al., 1996). The United States is one of the few

countries that uses a school-based sport system; most other countries use public or private

clubbased systems (Popp et al., 2011, p. 178). Whereas the United States uses a sport-for-all

model, other countries dedicate national sport bodies to developing top athletes (Popp et al, 2007,

p. 95). This club system exemplifies the need for a global amateurism standard. For example,

Türkiye uses a governmental and club model that conflicts with NCAA amateurism (Stewart,

2013, pp. 220-221). While this prong of amateurism is strictly upheld by the NCAA, other threats

to amateurism – namely, NIL rights – continue to develop and evolve, supporting Stewart’s claim

that “the underlying sham that is amateurism in big time college sports” (p. 223).

Looking at what specifically exemplifies push and pull factors, Bale’s (1991) push factors

included limited training opportunities in one’s home country, poor coaching in one’s home

country, and low competition level in one’s home country. These push factors perpetrate a U.S.-

centric, dominant American perspective global sport – a subjective deficit that is not supported by

other researchers. Namely, Jones et al. (2008) criticized Bale for only including international

student-athletes from one region of the world who competed in only two sports, demonstrating

the limits of his claims (Calkins, 2019).

Bale’s pull factors were coaches/friends in the US, academic reputation of the institution,

and the athletic reputation of the institution. Andris (2018) found that pull power was not

correlated with academic endowment and athletic expenditure, so those reputations cannot be

directly tied to financial resources of the institution. The work of Andris (2018) supports that of

Jones et al. (2008), specifying that athletic reputation – the top motivator in international

studentathlete recruitment, according to Jones et al. (2008) and Bale (1991) – could be defined by

competition level, strength of sport season schedule, and athletic conference membership.

Academic reputation could be tangibly represented through library resources, campus

dining/meal plans, closeness of athletic facilities to campus, personal training/athletic therapy

resources, academic advising opportunities, and information technology support. Jones et al.

(2008) included two additional pull categories: desire for independence (from home country and

parental influence) and environmental attractiveness (location of university, size of the city in

which it is located, and the weather/climate of that city).

Providing yet another perspective, Popp et al. (2011) reported that athletic scholarship and

personality of the head coach were the top two factors in international student-athletes' college

selection processes. American student-athletes, in contrast, rated attainment of a degree that

would lead to a respectable job and the overall reputation of the institution as the top two factors

for their college decision processes. International participants in this study identified two athletic

factors, whereas American participants identified two academic factors. Popp et al. (2011)

attributed this to the fact that American students are more familiar with U.S. college athletics

recruitment and therefore can be more concerned with academic recruitment.

International Student-Athlete Transitions

Rodriguez (2014) conducted a grounded theory study of international student-athletes'

transition issues, stressors, and coping mechanisms. Rodriguez found that:

1. International student-athletes have a more successful transition when they feel

integrated into their athletic team.

2. International student-athletes form strong relationships with other international

student-athletes, regardless of team or country of origin.

3. Practices and competitions are positive coping mechanisms for the stress of U.S.

higher education.

4. Conflict within the athletic team negatively creates stress that negatively affects

international student-athlete's athletic and academic performance. (2014, p. 44)

Related to the first two prongs of Rodriguez’s grounded theory, Gómez et al.

(2014) support the existence of three categories of international student-athlete

social ties: monocultural (with students of the same cultural background),

multicultural (with other international students), and bicultural (with students from

the host country). Most studies on international student social networks employ

one of the three types of social ties. One finding of Rodriguez’s (2014) grounded

study theory of international student-athlete transition issues was that international

student-athletes tend to form strong relationships with other international student-

athletes, regardless of team or country. Thus, it can be expected that multicultural

relationships are significant in international student-athletes' reflections upon their

experiences, but team integration, as identified by Rodriguez, requires a

combination of monocultural, multicultural, and bicultural social ties.

When Charitonidi and Kaburakis (2022) conducted research on the challenges of

international student-athletes' transition processes, they found four main themes: employment and

bureaucracy, health insurance, degree certification, and tax filing. However, none of these

challenges are specific to the athletics side of an international student-athlete's transition. The

challenges are all procedural, potentially faced by any international student. When asked

specifically about the NCAA’s role in international student-athletes' transition, the participants in

this study cited inattentiveness as the overarching theme: failure to help international

studentathletes adopt new strength and conditioning practices, navigate healthy eating in the

United States, and become educated about rules and regulations. One in eight participants

indicated that their overall experience with the NCAA was poor. The lack of postgraduate

support, perpetration of gender inequality, and selective attention to revenue-generating sports

were among the top complaints against the NCAA (Charitonidi & Kaburakis, 2022). This

research was conducted by the NCAA Inclusion and Research staff in accordance with the NCAA

Inclusion Forum in 2022.

Turick et al. (2020) probed stakeholders within athletic departments at NCAA Division I

institutions to understand how they attempted to ease the transition of international

studentathletes. The employees sought to increase cultural competence so they could have

conversations with international student-athletes about scholarships, homesickness, and

adjustments to American food. They also recognized how conscientious they must be about their

communication: limiting slang and assumptions of prior knowledge and using subtitles whenever

possible. Baghurst et al. (2018) broached the idea that coaches of international student-athletes

have a heightened obligation to act in loco parentis. It was reported by Pierce et al. (2011) that

coaches are only the main source of recruiting information for a quarter of prospective

international student-athletes. Equally as many participants cited family or friends in the U.S.

college system as their primary sources of information. Other researchers, including Trendafilova

et al. (2010), advise the implementation of peer recruitment and mentoring, relationships sparked

by common gender, region of the world, scholar type, and sport.

Ridinger and Pastore (2000) are widely cited for their finding that international

studentathletes are significantly more well-adjusted to college than international non-athletes and

American student-athletes (pp. 38-39). However, Ridinger and Pastore have been criticized for

their small international student-athlete sample size (n=16) and its lack of representation, as

participants were all from North America or Europe (Newell, 2015). Thus, the participants had

less cultural distance than international students from other continents, which aligns with the

earlier discussion about international students’ top countries and regions of origin versus

international student-athletes' top countries and regions of origin. Contradicting Ridinger and

Pastore (2000), Popp et al. (2011) reported that international student-athletes had lower

adjustment rates to U.S. colleges than their American student-athlete counterparts (Newell, 2015,

p. 38).

International Student-Athlete Support Services

Chartrand and Lent (1987) first emphasized the role of social and psychological services

in student-athlete support models. Newell (2015) built upon their work, calling for orientation and

mentoring programs – many of the same specialized services identified by participants in the

NCAA’s 2021 Think Tank. As English language testing moved to online formats, U.S. institutions

have had to grapple more frequently with international students who are not truly proficient in

English yet have scored high enough to forego English language classes. This has raised

questions about how those students should be supported when they start to fall behind in their

courses. When it comes to international student transition and adjustment, there is a fine line

between specialized services and accommodations. Lack of English language proficiency is not a

disability for which reasonable accommodations can be granted. From an immigration standpoint,

a first-year student can be authorized to drop below a full courseload if they are struggling with

the language barrier; however, from an NCAA standpoint, a student-athlete cannot drop below

full-time hours and still maintain their athletic eligibility. Herein lies another challenge of

balancing the international student and student-athlete identities, as well as a demonstration of the

need for athletic departments to collaborate with international student services offices to advise

and support international student-athletes.

The concept of “leveling the playing field” for international student-athletes is already

criticized by those in opposition to the globalization of intercollegiate athletics, American

student-athletes, and their support systems (Abbey-Pinegar, 2010; Zonder, 2013). Some scholars

suggest that American students primarily accept international student-athletes based on their

athletic status (Foo et al., 2015; Charitonidi & Kaburakis, 2022, p. 2). Another example of this is

the controversy surrounding scholarships for international student-athletes (Kennett, 2002).

Additionally, as evidenced by the NCAA’s efforts to limit them in the 1970s, international

student-athletes have not even been fully accepted by the U.S. higher education system. Hoffer

(1994) argued against them, saying they brought “no added benefit” to their host country. Hsieh

(2007) suggests an ongoing power exchange between international students and American

students. This controversy should be kept in mind while considering international student-athlete

transition, retention, and success initiatives because of the inevitable perceptions by various

stakeholders who may or may not have access to international student-athletes.

Quinaud et al. (2023) took an organization-level approach to undergraduate studentathlete

identity variation, using the mesosystem of sports and education to consider macrosystem-level

demographic, geographical, and cultural characteristics (p. 878). The researchers built upon

Rappaport’s (1985) timeline of identity perception-altering events and

Lupo et al.’s (2017b) work on the relationship between identity and motivation. Ultimately,

Quinaud et al. (2023) found that the student-athlete identity affiliation was highest at the

beginning of their undergraduate careers (p. 885). In Kibaek et al.’s (2022) exploration of the

effects of team identification on international student-athletes' transition processes, they found

support for Tafjel’s (1978) report that team identification is derived from the symbolic

interactionism of social identity theories.

Maintaining an organizational perspective of the “obstacle course” faced by prospective

international student-athletes, Connell (2007) pointed out that the NCAA Foreign Student

Records Committee meets twice a year to review eligibility cases (p. 60). Abbey-Pinegar (2010)

pointed out that in 2009-2010, the NCAA had 542 cases in which incoming athletes were accused

of violating amateurism. The Foreign Student Records Committee reviewed 472 of those cases, as

an astounding 87% of cases that year involved international student-athletes. If intercollegiate

athletics is to be truly globalized, its policies, particularly concerning global amateurism, must be

conducive to hosting international student-athletes (Roth, 2013).

One workaround for the NCAA’s eligibility requirements is a stint at a National Junior

College Athletic Association (NJCAA) institution (Butler et al., 2020). Although the NCAA does

not track the number of international student-athletes who transfer from a junior college, statistics

show that international student-athletes tend to transfer frequently once in the United States (p.

94). Spending two years at a junior college can afford international student-athletes opportunities

to adjust to the academic system, improve their English language skills, and hone their cultural

capital before transitioning to four-year institutions, as most NCAA members institutions are

(Butler et al., 2020).

International Student-Athlete Cultural Capital

The volume of existing literature on the transition and adjustment challenges facing

international students reinforces a deficit mindset, including Bordieu and Passeron (1977) and

Bordieu’s (1986) theories of cultural capital (O’Shea, 2016). O’Shea critiqued Bordieu (1986) for

limiting the effects of agency, specifically through Bordieu’s three states of cultural capital:

tangible goods, academic credentials or awards, and habitus. Habitus was defined by Bordieu as

“long-lasting dispositions of the body and mind,” and it can limit international students’

educational success by precluding them from “the implicit rules of the game.” This principle

negates the strengths of minority student groups, including international students who are less

familiar with U.S. education systems. While the researchers sought to explore how educational

systems reproduce social inequality by upholding the cultural practices of the dominant class,

they have been critiqued for limiting the effects of agency (O’Shea, 2016, p. 62).

In contrast, Yosso (2005) uses a strengths-based model that foregrounds experiential

knowledge. The Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework was developed in the context of

ethnic minorities, such as migrant farmworkers and Native American women, who return to

education. Thus, it draws upon migrant studies, critical race theory, sociology, and gender studies

to displace the standard of white, middle-class culture (O’Shea, 2016, pp. 60-63). Most recently,

Harry (2023) applied Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth to intercollegiate athletes of

color from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Building upon Yosso’s work, Manwell et al. (2021) used critical race theory to examine

the experiences of Hispanic international student-athletes. Hispanics are both the largest ethnic

minority in the United States and the fastest growing population in NCAA collegiate sports, yet

higher education is least successful in graduating Hispanic students (Manwell et al., 2021).

Familismo is a Hispanic social pattern by which family interests are given higher priority than

individual interests (p. 527). This is one form of Hispanic cultural capital, as it describes how

one’s connectedness with family supports their higher education endeavors. Disfrutando is

another prong of Hispanic cultural capital relevant to U.S. higher education. Translated to

“enjoying,” disfrutando encourages a balance between family, friends, work, and life that can be

seen as conflicting with American ideals of competition and individualism, which are especially

pertinent in athletics at primarily white institutions (PWIs) (p. 527). Harris and Kiyama (2015)

wrote that marginalization occurs when an institution’s principles so blatantly contradict the

social capital brought forth by its students. Herein lies evidence of the need to thwart assimilation

in the international student-athlete transition process, instead invigorating international student-

athletes to hone their ingrained cultural beliefs (Manwell et al., 2021). There is student-reported

evidence for the success of this tactic. Guillame and Trujillo (2018) surveyed female Latina

former student-athletes and found that navigating academic and athletic success led to a greater

understanding and appreciation of who they are ethnically (p. 529).

In contrast, Cenzual et al. (2021) made the argument for assimilating international

student-athletes to the college setting, writing that correlation exists between cultural intelligence

and social support. Thus, when individuals switch from embodying their original culture to

embodying their host culture, they have successfully undergone cross-cultural adaptation (2021,

p. 532). Cenzual et al. exemplify cultural intelligence as one’s ability to communicate effectively,

and social support as all the factors that reduce the international student-athlete's anxiety about

the host culture (2021, p. 532). Although Berry’s 1997 theory of acculturation is regarded as less

problematic than assimilation, it still causes identity confusion and acculturative stress, given that

individuals’ values, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by both their home culture and their

host culture (Kim et al., 2021, p. 288).

International Student-Athletes: Neo-Racism

Lee and Opio (2011) are the leading scholars on African student-athletes in U.S. higher

education (Calkins, 2019). They use Spears’ theoretical framework of neo-racism: “the

subordination of minorities on the basis of culture” (Lee & Opio, 2011, p. 630). This strain of

minority discrimination has been defended by perpetrators because discrimination is based on

nationality – including cultural and historical relationships between countries – rather than

physical characteristics (pp. 633-634). Neo-racism originated as commentary on anti-immigrant

rhetoric in Europe and is considered the European equivalent of American scholars’ use of critical

race theory (CRT). However, CRT is primarily applied to domestic racism rather than

international racism. Neo-racism and CRT are both rooted in racial discrimination, but the former

has a sojourner component (Lee & Opio, 2011, p. 633). Current examples of neo-racism in U.S.

college athletics include the sentiment that international student-athletes should not be able to

earn All-American honors (p. 634) and that Muslim international student-athletes should not fast

during Ramadan, as it will affect their athletic performance (p. 637). Thus, neo-racism is crucial

to an analysis of challenges faced by international student-athletes in the United States. In

additional, international students face far more limited work options and thus have difficulties

staying in the United States after graduation.

Lee and Opio qualitatively investigated neo-racism, finding that it is perpetrated through a

burden of ignorance, negative stereotypes, and discrimination. All but one of their participants (a

South African student) had belonged to the majority race in their home country, so they were

systemically minoritized for the first time upon arrival in the United States. Assumptions about

their religion and intelligence were used to discriminate against them in class and in sport. The

participants reported feeling particularly targeted by faculty members, who underestimated their

academic abilities. Overall, Lee and Opio’s participants reported feeling unwelcome in the US,

which contradicts Love and Kim’s (2011) report that all international student-athletes endorse

the opportunity to study and compete in the America higher education system.

Sato and Hodge (2009) explored the experiences of African student-athletes at a

historically Black college or university (HBCU), finding that African student-athletes were

subjected to the same stereotypes faced by African-American student-athletes: being violent,

unintelligent, and disrespectful (Tradore, 2004; Lee & Opio, 2011). Minimal research specifically

focuses on international student-athletes at non-PWIs. Sato et al. (2011) qualitatively analyzed the

experiences of international student-athletes from Brazil, Serbia, South Korea, and the

Philippines who were enrolled at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the

United States, documenting their experiences as non-Black students. However, much of the

literature is rooted in the inaugural work done by Ridinger and Pastore (2000), which exclusively

surveyed international student-athletes at PWIs.

International Student-Athlete Cultural Distance

Gilgunn (2010) explored Canadian student-athletes' experiences at U.S. institutions,

finding that international travel itself is an integral aspect of the transition to adulthood for

middle-class Canadian young people (p. 56). The participants attended institutions in the Boston

area, so they had little geographical distance from their home country and culture, but their

temporary move to the United States was still celebrated as a symbol of self-transformation. Of

note, western U.S. institutions and private institutions across the country tend to attract

international student-athletes from more distant countries, thus having populations with greater

cultural distance (Andris, 2018).

International Student-Athlete Satisfaction

Foster and Lally (2021) interviewed former student-athletes who had been removed from

college sport for at least five years to inquire about the long-term impact of the NCAA

experience. The three resulting themes were global thinking, development and application of life

skills, and better preparation for post-graduate sport endeavors than non-sport careers. There are

infinitely many factors and phases that affect international student-athletes’ satisfaction with their

experience at a U.S. higher education institution, including recruitment, transition, support, neo-

racism, cultural capital, and cultural distance. Foster and Lally’s (2021) contributes a

retrospective look at international student-athletes’ experiences, but the existing literature would

be augmented by insights into current international student-athletes satisfaction with their

experiences.

Summary of Literature

Much of the literature on international students and collegiate student-athletes focuses on

one area of the student life cycle, from recruitment and selection to first-year transitions to

support services to graduation and satisfaction. Practitioners see a new cohort of students go

through this cycle every year, whereas international student-athletes only get one chance. As is

the educative nature of college, however, this one chance holds space for students to try new

things, to fail, to learn, and to try again. This is how college experiences drive students toward

self-authorship; when they have to look inward for their wants, needs, motivations, purpose, and

meaning, they become individuals with strong internal foundations, capable of deciding who and

what they want to be when they graduate. This research elicits international student-athletes’

lived experiences to understand the extent to which they were able to build their internal

foundations.

This project addresses a gap in the literature by taking an individualized approach to

amplifying the lived experiences of international student-athletes at U.S. higher education

institution. The photo elicitation research method affords collaborators agency over their

interview agendas and provides visual tools for recall, helping collaborators convey the formative

identity-shaping experiences throughout their college years. This project’s research questions

ponder the role of U.S. higher education institutions in international student-athletes’ journeys

toward self-authorship, asking how international student-athletes’ experiences shape their

identities and facilitate personal change, specifically through their own self-perceptions.

Externally, the research asks international student-athletes how their institutions have prepared

them for postgraduate success, questioning whether U.S. higher education adequately serves its

students on non-immigrant visas, who are expected to return to lives and careers in their home

countries upon graduation. It is one thing to give international student-athletes the U.S. higher

education experience, but it is a separate (and far more important) thing to give international

student-athletes the higher education experiences in the United States that will serve them no

matter where they go when they graduate.

Summary of the Theoretical Framework

Baxter Magolda’s Self-Authorship

Baxter Magolda (2001) coined self-authorship as “the internal capacity to define one’s

beliefs, identity and social relations” (p. 269). Narrowly, it is a person’s ability to author their

decisions and lives, independent of influences from others. More broadly, it is understood as

one’s movement along the continuum from externally oriented meaning-making to internally

oriented identification (Baxter Magolda et al., 2012, p. 13). Baxter Magolda differentiated

selfauthorship – a “foundation for learning” – from Kegan’s (1994) Levels of Consciousness (or

Orders of the Mind), which frames one’s movement through increasingly complex ways of

knowing, by applying the theory of self-authorship to the ways students learn how to share a

residence hall with a stranger, make friends in their new environments, and begin to identify who

and what they might want to be when they graduate (Baxter Magolda et al., 2012, p. 1).

In an educational context, Magolda and King (2007) use “journey toward selfauthorship"

language to attest to the continuum’s transcendence across one’s pre-college, incollege, and post-

college years (p. 493). Baxter Magolda’s (2001) theory of self-authorship asks three questions:

1. How do I know? [epistemological]

2. Who am I? [intrapersonal]

3. How do I want to construct relationships with others? [interpersonal]

According to the theory, students learn the answers to the three questions as they follow a

fourphase model. Baxter Magolda’s (2001) phases of (1) external formulas, (2) crossroads, (3)

becoming the author of one’s own life, and (4) internal foundations comprise the trajectory of

one’s journey toward self-authorship. Participants start with the external formulas they are raised

to know and embody. Crossroads may include feelings of dissatisfaction or desire to self-define

(Baxter Magolda, 2001). Phase three, then, entails actively working toward self-definition,

specifically by honing internal perspectives. Internal foundations are established when those

internally defined perspectives are used to guide actions, interactions, and interpretive meaning

making (Baxter Magolda, 2001).

Baxter Magolda’s Learning Partnership Model

Baxter Magolda’s (2001) Learning Partnership Model (LPM) is a heuristic technique to

explain how one’s membership in a club, organization, or team facilitates their movement through

the phases of the self-authorship continuum. The LPM bears three principles:

1. Validate students as knowers.

2. Situate learning in students’ experiences.

3. Define learning as mutually constructing meaning.

Baxter Magolda (2001, 2004) found that one explanation for participants failing to progress

through all phases of self-authorship was that higher education institutions were too prescriptive;

they provided too many formulas, crutches, directives, and safeguards. Self-authorship is

catalyzed when students must make a decision for which there is no clear pathway or objectively

correct answer (Pizzolato, 2003). Students’ opportunities to choose desires, beliefs, goals, and

values were smothered.

International student-athletes’ participation in collegiate sports is an example of engaging

with a learning partnership model. Athletic teams and international student communities are both

examples of learning partnerships, and, once again, international student-athletes fall at the

intersection of the two. In a Division I collegiate athletic department, there is no shortage of

support staff members, and international student-athletes also have international student support

staff members to support them. It is worth exploring, from the student’s point of view, whether a

university’s support of international student-athletes advances or restricts their progress toward

self-authorship.

Critical Approaches to Baxter Magolda’s Self-Authorship

Pizzolato et al. (2012) explored self-authorship among 166 participants of color,

predicated on the presence of identity dissonance – differences between participants’ perceptions

of their identities and others’ perceptions of their identities – and relationship dissonance – the

personal, relational, and cultural consequences of meaning making. A major finding in this study

was insight on Asian participants’ senses of identity and relationships. Generally, in Asian

cultures, the self is not seen as autonomous. Asian students are more likely to experience

dissonance when they must make a decision involving others, whereas European students are

more likely to experience dissonance when they must make a decision solely involving the self

(Pizzolato et al., 2012). This is parallel to Manwell’s (2021) exploration of familismo as Hispanic

students balance family interests with personal interests.

Through a critical review of the existing literature, Perez (2019) called for the

reenvisioning of self-authorship in an identity- and power-conscious way to better navigate an

increasingly diverse society, as Baxter Magolda’s work centered white, middle-class men.

Whereas Magolda and King (2007) identified self-authorship as a lens for understanding

development, Perez took a bigger picture-approach, applying Crotty’s four paradigmatic

perspectives to the body of self-authorship literature to categorize self-authorship scholars’

conceptualizations of the journey as constructivism, social constructionism, critical paradigms, or

critical constructivism.

Constructivism

Much of the early self-authorship literature (Perry 1968/1999, Belenky, Clinchy,

Goldberger & Tarule, 1986/1997, Baxter Magolda, 1992/2001; Kegan, 1982/1994), is rooted in

Crotty’s (1998) concept of constructivism, which assumes that reality is constructed through

individuals’ interactions with the world. Even Piaget’s (1950) work on cognitive structures

employs a developmental constructivist paradigm (Magolda & King, p. 495). Because the

constructivist relationship is only between the individual and their surroundings, the importance

of shared social construction is negated. This inherent sense of individualism fails to account for

the thinking processes of minoritized populations and individuals from other cultures.

Social Constructionism

Through Crotty’s (1998) paradigm of social constructionism, meaning making occurs

when one interprets their interactions with the world, and those interpretations are subject to the

influence of one’s environment and culture. Torres and Hernandez (2007) exemplify this

paradigmatic perspective in their study on the influence of ethnic identity on Latinx students’ self-

authorship development. However, this paradigm still fails to foreground the power, privilege,

and oppression that is rooted in the environments and cultures shaping individuals’ interpretations

of their interactions with the world.

Critical Paradigms

Torres and Hernandez’s (2007) longitudinal study of Latino/a college students launched

the conversation about self-authorship and power, privilege, and oppression relative to minority

college students in the United States. Critical paradigms posit that power, privilege, and

oppression affect one’s experiences with the world and their meaning-making interpretations of

those experiences (Crotty, 1998). Critical paradigms using critical race theory have since been

more widely applied to the collegiate context. For example, Linley (2017) introduced a

meaningmaking filter as a way for minoritized peers to interpret socialization within their

collegiate experiences (Perez, 2019).

Using this paradigmatic perspective, Abes and Hernandez (2016) argued for the

reexamination of self-authorship theory to account for systems of oppression. Hernández (2016)

reframed Baxter Magolda’s (2001) three central questions. Instead of asking …

1. How do I know? [epistemological]

2. Who am I? [intrapersonal]

3. How do I want to construct relationships with others? [interpersonal]

Hernández asks:

1. How do I make meaning of my world? [cognitive]

2. How does my social world shape my sense of self as a racialized being?

[intrapersonal]

3. What kinds of relationships do I want with others for the benefit of my social

world? [interpersonal]

Hernández’s central questions are designed to evoke more globalized and race/ethnicityconscious

answers from participants. In their research, Torres and Hernandez use the Matrix of Holistic

Development Including Latino/a Cultural Choices to identify where participants are on their

journeys toward self-authorship (p. 569). This matrix visually represents the intersection of

Baxter Magolda’s theory, Hernández’s revisions, and Torres and Hernandez’s work, serving as a

more culturally attuned matrix for understanding international student-athletes’ journeys toward

self-authorship. Thus, the version of the matrix shown in Figure 3 is used in Phase III of this

research project’s data analysis to organize the participant data according to its role in

collaborators’ journeys toward self-authorship. Figure 3 differs from the original matrix in that it

changes Latino/a-specific terms to general identity terms (i.e., “informed Latino perspective” was

changed to “informed identity perspective”).

Themes of Critical Race Theory. The undeniable pertinence of critical race theory

(CRT) as an interpretive lens for this research is the participants’ positionality as minoritized

individuals plunged into the highly publicized, dominant, and slow-to-change culture of Division

I intercollegiate athletics at U.S. higher education institutions in the southeastern United States.

Participants’ insights on the ways they learned to represent themselves and their identities, in the

face of pre-existing cultural perceptions and expectations, contributes to the CRT literature on

non-immigrants in America (Bell, 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). The research method of

photo elicitation interviews supports the facet of CRT scholarship that seeks to amplify the

experiences of diverse individuals.

Critical Constructivism

Crotty’s (1998) fourth paradigm of critical constructivism merges the constructivist and

critical paradigms to assume that knowledge is socially constructed, and the social world with

which individuals interact is shaped by social, cultural, and historical power dynamics. Until

Perez’s critical review of literature, this paradigm had not been applied to self-authorship. Much

of the self-authorship literature employs a color-evasive ideology (2017); only two of the 22

works reviewed by Perez accounted for both race and racism. In all other cases, understanding of

development has centralized whiteness as the normative race (Perez); most of Baxter Magolda’s

(2001, 2009) longitudinal study participants were white, so her work on self-authorship is an

inaccurate point of reference for exploration of international student-athletes' self-authorship. Her

1992 study only included students from a single selective, public, midwestern school – all of

whom were white (Pizzolato, 2003, p. 798). Kierkegaard poses the question, “Can we maintain

the plurality of different perspectives, pronounced by all these voices, and still be able to maintain

meaning?” (Kierkegaard, as cited in Kaasgaard, 2018, p. 329). Perhaps the answer lies within

critical constructivist self-authorship research.

Student Agency

Human agency is a social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1989) that accounts for the ability of

people to influence their functioning through their actions. The theory of student agency describes

how students’ intentionality and self-reflectiveness (actions) are agentic drivers of power and will

(facets of functioning) (Bandura, 2008; Klemencic, 2015). According to Biesta (2008), student

agency is not something students possess; rather, it refers to the quality of their actions and

interactions. The theories of self-authorship and student agency are both dependent upon

influence in the development of self. Particularly in the interpersonal domain of selfauthorship,

one’s external influences become less powerful as their internal influences become more powerful

(Baxter Magolda, 2001, p. 141). In student agency, students’ interactions with others provide the

content for their self-reflectiveness, which affects their power and will. Engaging participants in

this qualitative research study was purposeful, with the underlying goal of facilitating intentional

self-reflection.

Student Voice

Particularly in education, one’s voice is one’s ability to create cognitive dissonance

(Treacy & Leavy, 2021). As U.S. higher education navigates its relationship with students as

consumers, voice is a way to understand consumers’ positionality. Although the term “voice” can

imply that a person has only one voice, Robinson and Taylor (2007) deem that the monolingual

assumption is but an illusion (p. 6). “Voice” encompasses both the literal speech and the

representative qualities of the speech that shed light on the student’s perspectives and worldviews

(Robinson & Taylor, 2007, p. 6). The use of one’s voice is subscripted within thoughts that are

vocalized and withheld, as well as action and inaction. Thus, voice has been practiced by

collaborators throughout their college careers. Their decisions to study a certain discipline in the

United States at a particular institution, to trust a coach with their athletic development, and to

explore their identities outside athletics are all expressions of the student voice. By participating

in this research, international student-athletes used their voice in yet another way. Using the

agency afforded to them by the photo elicitation interview research method, collaborators

engaged with the research process to contribute to the existing literature on international student-

athlete development.

Figure 2

Relationship Between Theories of Self-Authorship, Student Agency & Student Voice

Table 1

Matrix of Holistic Development (Hernández, 2016)

Table 1 (Continued)

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

Research Problem

Baxter Magolda tasked colleges and universities with facilitating the movement of

students along the self-authorship continuum, saying, “Higher education has a responsibility to

help young adults make the transition from being shaped by society to shaping society in their

role as leaders in society’s future” (1999, p. 630). Higher education can and should influence the

quality of its students’ actions and interactions to provide formative opportunities for students to

move toward internal meaning-making – a crucial factor in providing a transformative experience

in higher education institutions.

The problem is that international student-athletes do not fit within the movement that

seeks to produce future leaders of a U.S. society. Are higher education institutions responsible for

taking students primarily shaped by their home cultures and, over a few years, shaping them to

lead a U.S. society? The incongruence of this model is that U.S. higher education is not serving

these non-immigrant students, particularly as it pertains to their agency, authorship, and voice.

Florida’s recent legislative flurry exemplifies the ways in which higher education neglects

and acts against minoritized individuals, including international students. State House Bill

999/Senate Bill 266, signed in May 2023, prohibits higher education institutions in the state

university system from spending public money on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)

initiatives; prohibits the teaching of DEI and critical race theory (CRT); and allocated funding to

establish civic and traditional education. In 2022-2023, there were over 40,000 international

students studying in the state of Florida; Florida hosts the seventh-most international students in

the United States (Institute of International Education, 2023b). That year, more than 750,000

international students were in the United States on non-immigrant visas (Institute of International

Education, 2023b). Although the system is not designed for them, international students are huge

parts of higher education institutions and state systems.

How can U.S. higher education institutions prepare international student-athletes for

success with minimized or negated DEI initiatives and “traditional” curricula, especially when

they are expected to return to their home countries upon completion of their degrees? The use of

self-authorship as a theoretical framework supports Gargano’s (2012) position that international

identity theories are not necessarily appropriate nor effective in U.S. higher education.

Selfauthorship does not define what one’s internal foundations should be; rather, it defines the

indicators that one has been able to self-define and establish internal foundations. Self-authorship

looks different for every student, regardless of their identity affiliations. Research on international

student-athletes’ progression toward self-authorship not only sheds light on the application of this

theory to a specific student population, but it also centers students’ first-hand accounts of their

experiences. Using the photo elicitation research method allowed each collaborator to decide

what they wanted to share about their experiences, and no two collaborators presented the same

stories or the same data. To this end, Gargano makes the argument that using citizenship and

nationality as organizing agents in identity development research neglects the complexity of the

individual self (2012, pp. 144-145). This project sought collaborators from as many different

countries as possible to avoid the unfair generalization of international student-athletes

experiences because they share a country of origin.

Research Design

The purpose of this research is to explore international student-athletes’ perceptions of

their personal identity development, in the context of their experiences as international

studentathletes at U.S. higher education institutions. The results of this research add to the

literature on minoritized individuals’ pathways through Hernández’s (2016) culturally attuned

revisions of Baxter Magolda’s (2001) theory of self-authorship.

Research Method: Photo Elicitation Interviews

This qualitative, case study research design uses photo elicitation interviews (PEI) to

engage participants in the visual representation of their personal narratives (Copes et al., 2018).

The research design was developed from an objectivist epistemological approach and an

ethnographic methodological perspective (Crotty, 1998, p. 5). PEI was originally developed by

anthropologists and sociologists, but it gained traction in education research for its abilities to

connect research to practice in educational settings – as seen through the eyes of students (Torre

& Murphy, 2015) – and to uncover the less visible dimensions of educational settings (Allen,

2009; Werts et al., 2012). It has been recognized as a post-positivist paradigm that “better

approximate[s] reality” (Zhang & Hennebry-Leung, 2023), and it was used in this research design

to learn about collaborators’ realities from their own perspectives (Torre & Murphy, 2015).

Collier first validated the utility of photographs as research tools in 1957, and at its core,

photo elicitation is just the use of photography in research (Harper, 2002). The photos are meant

to “invoke comments, memory and discussion,” regardless of whether the photos are created

specifically for the research project (Banks, 2007, p. 65). This research design did not task

collaborators with taking photos specifically for this project; instead, collaborators were asked to

submit multimedia that had already been created and represents their everyday lives as

international student-athletes. Although the research method is called photo elicitation,

collaborators were encouraged to submit photos and videos.

The media could have been taken of or by the collaborators. Particularly at Division I

institutions, college athletics are thoroughly documented by athletic departments’ photographers

and videographers. Collaborators were free to submit those media to drive the PEI. However,

media did not have to be professionally captured. Media from social networking platforms

including Snapchat, BeReal, and TikTok were just as valid and brought just as much value to the

interviews that followed.

Photographs are polysemic (Clark-Ibanez, 2004), but collaborators actively engaged in

their own representation by “directing our gaze” toward images of their choosing during the PEIs

(Copes et al., 2018, p. 482; Frohmann, 2005). This is one way that PEI helped collaborators

construct and convey their personal identity narratives. The media were meant to build a

partnership between the researcher and the collaborators, amplify the right of collaborators to talk

about what is important to them (Wells et al., 2013), and serve as “visual inventories” for

reference, recall, and reflection (Clark-Ibanez, 2004; Epstein et al., 2006; Ford et al., 2017, p.

113; Harper, 2002; Radley & Taylor, 2003). PEI was well suited to this research on international

student-athletes’ identity development because of its “applicability to research on identities in

post-conflict areas” (Leonard & McKnight, 2014). This research method gave collaborators the

recall tools to reflect on who they were and who they are (Copes, 2018).

According to Padgett et al., PEIs work best in tandem with standard interview methods

(2013). In contrast to structured or semi-structured qualitative interviews, PEIs are not driven by

the researcher’s sense of direction (Sewell, 2005). Instead, the researcher’s direction was

exemplified in the call for media, but each collaborator’s agency – a concept central to the

interpersonal domain of Baxter Magolda’s self-authorship – was the driving force for the rest of

the data collection process (Baxter Magolda, 2001, p. 141). In this way, the interviews could be

considered unstructured, but the scaffolding had already been submitted by the collaborators. PEI

has been identified as a pedagogical tool to further support students’ journeys toward

selfauthorship (Torre & Murphy, 2015, p. 17). Still, the unpredictability of collaborator

engagement with photo elicitation loomed as a challenge, so it was imperative to have an

interview protocol prepared (Wong, 2023).

Aspects of narrative interviewing were still employed to uncover collaborators’

selfperceptions, in that interviews were valued both for their content and for the ways

collaborators engaged with the interview process, as the latter revealed social, cultural, and

institutional influences (Cresswell, 2013; Cresswell & Poth, 2018; Riessman, 1993, p. 4). As Gee

(1991) writes, attention had to be paid to collaborators’ voice, pitch, delivery, pauses, and

emphases. Documenting these aspects of the conversation through field notes added a layer of

data to the research.

Research Questions

Guiding questions, based on the theoretical roots of Baxter Magolda’s (2001) theory of

self-authorship and Hernández’s (2016) culturally sensitive revisions, probe cognitive,

intrapersonal, and interpersonal foundations. They ask how one’s experiences affect the way they

make meaning of the world, how one’s experiences shape their sense of self, and how one’s

experiences reveal the relationships they want with others. These are the questions that existing

literature seeks to answer. At their core, the research questions still address Baxter Magolda’s

questions (How do I know? Who am I? How do I want to construct relationships with others?),

but they incorporate the more worldly perspectives of Hernández (2016).

The questions are posed to learn how the collaborators’ college experiences mold them

and their worlds, which is crucial to the understanding of how international student-athletes

transition back to their home countries upon graduation. As framed by the theory of

selfauthorship, how do international student-athletes perceive the ways their experiences at U.S.

higher education institutions prepared them for their postgraduate plans?

I used photo elicitation interviews to look at how media representing international

student-athletes’ senses of agency, voice, and self-authorship provided insight into the following

research questions:

1. How do international student-athletes’ experiences at U.S. higher education

institutions shape their identities?

2. How do international student-athletes at U.S. higher education institutions

perceive their preparation for postgraduate success?

3. How do international student-athletes evaluate their personal changes throughout

their college careers?

Through these questions, I wanted to learn about the ways that U.S. higher education

institutions may be exploiting international student-athletes’ athletic abilities based on their

nonimmigrant statuses, failing to invest in the development of these students as future societal

leaders with concrete postgraduate plans.

The first research question was intended to explore how international student-athletes’

engagement with the learning partnership models of college athletics and international student

communities shaped the ways they view themselves and the ways they present themselves to

others. Is one of those identities more dominant in defining the international student-athlete’s

college experience and sense of self? How do the student-athlete identity and international

student identity interact with students’ infinite other identities? This question was inspired by the

intrapersonal probing of Baxter Magolda (2001) and Hernández (2016).

The second research question prompted international student-athlete collaborators to use

their student voice to evaluate how their college experiences have changed them and prepared

them to continue their education or pursue a career in the United States; to return to their home

country to continue their education or pursue a career; or to go elsewhere in the world to continue

their education or pursue a career. Earning a degree at a U.S. higher education institution opens

many doors for international student-athletes, but athletics staff and international services staff

could better prepare this demographic for postgraduate success using the insights from graduating

international student-athletes that were gleaned through this project. It was an opportunity for a

niche group of consumers to provide their unique insights on the value of U.S. higher education,

particularly pertaining to its utility in a globalized working world.

The third research question encapsulated the self-reflection of the first question and the

outward appraisal of the second question to explore international student-athletes’ perceptions of

how they have changed because of their college experiences. What makes it “worth” being an

international student-athlete? Are there downfalls to being an international student-athlete (i.e.,

delayed military service, absence from familial duties, attainment of a degree that does not retail

its value abroad)? Becoming an international student-athlete is a choice, and I wanted to learn

about the lived pros and cons of that choice from the seasoned international student-athletes

themselves.

Collaborators Identifying Collaborators

Since heterogeneity of collaborator demographics was one of the researcher’s goals, the

purposive sampling strategy of maximum variation sampling was used to identify prospective

collaborators (Buss, 1995; Mayhew, 2004; Richardson & Nuru-Jeter, 2011). International student-

athletes competing at NCAA Division I institutions across the southeastern United States were

identified as potential collaborators for this study. The researcher’s setting was the researcher’s

institution, but collaborators had the option between in-person and Webex interviews, depending

on their geographic location at the time of data collection. The prospective collaborators were all

classified as seniors, fifth-year students, or graduate students. This ensured that collaborators had

years of experiences in the United States to talk about in their interviews. All the athletic teams

from which collaborators were identified had at least two international student-athletes to

acknowledge how many of their teammates were fellow international studentathletes versus

American student-athletes. The researcher sought collaborators from a variety of countries to

represent many diverse cultures. Male and female collaborators represented athletic teams with

high international density.

A challenge with collaborator recruitment is that NCAA regulations prevent

incentivization specifically for student-athletes; incentives can only be given to student-athletes

when non-student-athletes are also eligible to receive them (NCAA, 2018). Therefore, there was

no material buy-in for collaborators to participate in this research project. However, it is an

educational partnership that gave them an opportunity to reflect on their experiences. Catalytic

validity refers to “the degree to which the research process re-orients, focusses, and energizes

collaborators …knowing reality in order to better transform it” (Lather, 1986, p. 67). While

catalytic validity is difficult to market to prospective collaborators, it was a benefit of

participation in this research project, as collaborators gained self-understanding while making

necessary contributions to the existing literature (Lather, 1986, p. 67; Moje, 2000, p. 25).

Negotiating Access and Entry

After acquiring Internal Review Board approval through the researcher’s institution, the

researcher reached out to sports information staff, student-athlete development staff, and athletic

academics staff at prospective collaborators’ institutions to explain the research and request

access to prospective collaborators through their university email addresses. The researcher sent

emails to athletics staff members at 14 NCAA Division I institutions in the southeast, but only

three email recipients responded. Two provided instructions for the researcher to go through their

institutions’ IRB processes, and one granted access to prospective collaborators by agreeing to

forward the call for collaborators to prospective collaborators’ university email addresses. The

athletics staff member who agreed to share the call for collaborators works at and represents the

researcher’s institution. Only being able to recruit collaborators from one institution was not the

original goal of the research design, but the nature of the project depended on facilitation of

interviews before collaborators graduated. Therefore, it was necessary to move forward using

only the researcher’s home institution as a pool for prospective collaborators.

When prospective collaborators responded to researcher’s interest email, the researcher

thoroughly presented the project to prospective collaborators, giving them the option to accept or

decline involvement in the project. From there, informed consent agreements were signed, and

interviews were arranged with those who choose to participate.

Researcher’s Positionality

This research project is inspired by my current work as an international student advisor

and my previous work in student-athlete development. I left the intercollegiate athletics because I

felt like I was doing performative work that would uphold the institution’s reputation, rather than

investing in students’ needs and building the institution’s brand that way. I found success in my

current role by asking students what they need and pooling my resources to best support them.

This research project is an extension of that approach, designed to be genuinely student-centered

and educative for the researcher, the collaborators, and the readers.

I chose to use PEI for this research design to heighten the agency of collaborators. I have

critically reviewed the prescriptive practices of college athletic departments as a potential

hindrance to student development, and the conscious choice to use PEI allowed me to practice

loosened control. However, PEI can make it even more difficult for the researcher to remain

detached from the collaborators (Copes et al., 2018). Because this is not positivist research, it was

not possible for me to be detached from the collaborators and the data they shared. Too much

rapport between the researcher and collaborators could lead to collaborators neglecting to read the

informed consent agreement and understand the ways their data may be used. My firsthand

experiences as an international student advisor and former student-athlete development

coordinator informed my subjectivities, but I worked to mitigate my subjectivity and build

trustworthiness by having collaborators review their transcripts for accuracy, triangulating the

multiple sources of data, and reviewing my findings against the existing literature. By mitigating

my subjectivity, the collaborators’ accounts of their self-authorship were the focal points of the

data collection, analysis, and discussion. Through memos and conscious adherence to the

interview protocol, I identified places where my subjectivities were not mitigated, and I

highlighted those instances in the discussion of results.

Data Collection and Procedures

After informed consent agreements for the media elicitation and the photo elicitation

interview were signed, collaborators received the prompt for the media elicitation (which

contained specific upload guidelines, including instructions to blur non-participants’ faces and to

exclude any media featuring minors), a link to their OneDrive folder (shared only between the

individual collaborator and the researcher), and their interview logistics (calendar invitation with

Webex link or physical interview location). Collaborators uploaded the media to their OneDrive

folders before the interviews, and the researcher briefly reviewed the media before the interview

to gain first impressions and outside perspective on the media. It was recommended that

collaborators upload 10-15 pieces of media that represent their international student-athlete

experience. Interviews were conducted within a month of the initial contact between prospective

collaborators and the researcher, primarily to accommodate collaborators’ impending graduation

ceremonies.

Each collaborator engaged in a 90-minute interview. Whether the interview was

conducted via Webex or in person, the interview audio was recorded within Webex, and the

researcher also used a secondary audio recording device. The value of audio-recording in-person

interviews using Webex is the automatic transcription feature, which produces a base transcript

for the researcher to use. The transcripts were manually edited for clarity and to account for

collaborators’ accents and nonverbal cues of language barriers. This is why all collaborators were

asked to agree to audio recording in their photo elicitation interview informed consent

documents.

The interview began with informational questions about the collaborators, followed by the

photo elicitation, and concluding with reflections on collaborators’ identity development –

specifically asking collaborators how they have changed during their international student-athlete

experiences (Wong, 2023). During the photo elicitation portion of the interview, the media was

shared on the screen by the researcher. Collaborators were first asked how they went about

choosing 10-15 files for this project, and then they were asked to talk about the context and

significance of each individual file.

Audio/video recordings and transcripts were moved to each collaborator’s individual

OneDrive folder on the date of their collection, and they were uploaded to the Nvivo 12 software

(along with the collaborators’ media files) at the beginning of the data analysis phase. This

allowed collaborators to review their materials and request any omissions until the project’s

submission, as explained to them in the informed consent documents. Audio, video, transcript,

and media files were permanently erased at the conclusion of this project.

Data Analysis

Nvivo 12 Data Analysis Software Overview

Nvivo is a qualitative data software used by researchers to organize, code, and analyze

multiple data sources, including textual and audiovisual data sources. This software, created by

QSR International, features query, search, and visualization functions. Using Nvivo, I imported

my data sources, including interview audio files & transcripts, photos & videos, and analytic

memos. Similar to Torres and Hernandez’s (2007) Matrix of Holistic Development, I created

three classifications of data aligning with the theoretical framework: cognitive, intrapersonal

(ethnic identity), and interpersonal (cultural orientation) (p. 569). Within those classifications, I

tagged each collaborator’s data based on its place on the self-authorship continuum: external

formulas, crossroads, becoming author of one’s life, and internal foundation (p. 569). This

allowed me to structure the data in a way that supported its alignment with the theoretical

framework. Successful data analysis revealed where collaborators are in their journeys toward

self-authorship, based on their self-perceptions.

Data Collection and Analytical Structure

Phase I: Individual collaborators’ themes

•Identify themes within each collaborator’s data (media and interview

responses)

Phase II: Salient themes across collaborators’ data:

•Part 1. Identify themes across collaborators’ media

•Part 2. Identify themes across collaborators’ interview responses Phase

III: Alignment of themes with self-authorship framework:

•Associate identified themes with phases of self-authorship, as outlined in

the

Matrix of Holistic Development (Torres and Hernandez, 2007)

Figure 3

Researcher Memo Protocol

Figure 4

Media Analysis Protocol

The Media Analysis Protocol helped me describe the relevant aspects of the data to readers

without jeopardizing collaborators’ privacy and confidentiality.

Reliability & Validity

Some researchers insist that, when using PEI, photos are not to be used as individual

pieces of data because participants’ control of the data collection can negatively impact reliability

and validity (Torre & Murphy, 2015). Using the media on its own also poses the risk of

improperly depicting participants as one-dimensional characters (Frohmann, 2005). To combat

this, collaborators were given the option to sign a media release, allowing up to three of their

media files to physically appear in the published research project. This caused a forfeiture of

anonymity for the collaborators who so choose, but it heightened the depiction of collaborators as

complex and accurately portrayed characters (Frohmann, 2005).

Other researchers argue that analyzing photos as datapoints positively impacts reliability

and validity, since the researcher’s analysis of the photos can be triangulated with the interview

transcript data (Agnenyega, 2008; Harper, 2002). For this research design, I analyzed the media

in Nvivo, using collaborators’ explanations of the media’s significance to draw themes within and

amongst their visual and verbal data. To its credit, PEI alters the power dynamic between the

researcher and collaborators. Collaborators were given the opportunity to discuss what they deem

relevant, which helped reduce researcher bias by lending agency over the key portion of the

interview agenda (Lapenta, 2011, p. 206).

Confidentiality & Ethics

The rich, central media aspect of this research method heightened the duty of the

researcher to ensure that collaborators knew why their data was being collected, how it could be

conveyed, and how far it could be distributed. In this project, the role of the researcher was to be

a conduit for collaborators’ stories, consciously working to collect data that cannot harm the

participants nor their reputations. The informed consent agreement addressed participants’

choices to digitally transmit media, participate in interviews, and have their media disseminated

(Frohmann, 2005). Confidentiality was upheld by using pseudonyms to adhere to IRB and

research ethics principles from the time of data collection to the dissemination of findings.

Collaborators’ data was stored and organized by their pseudonyms and countries of origin. Still,

the collaborators are collegiate athletes, so it is possible that their identities could be deduced.

Even for those who chose to sign the optional media release, their names are still being withheld,

but their images are published in the research project. Acknowledging and conveying to

collaborators the extent of these possibilities was crucial.

As evidenced by PEI researchers, the additional ethical concerns of this research method

are that (1) participants are not fully aware of how their photos are used (Shohel & Mahruf, 2012)

and (2) photos may identify non-participants who have not consented to be part of the research

study. Solutions to the first concern included explaining in depth to collaborators where and how

their data may appear, as well as giving collaborators the opportunity to withdraw media through

the data collection process. The disclosure of where and how collaborators’ data would appear

began when collaborators were initially contacted for participation in the study, with each

collaborator receiving an email containing this information. The information was repeated in the

informed consent agreement, and it was verbally reiterated at the start of the photo elicitation

interview. After each interview, when the transcript was sent to the collaborator for review, the

collaborator was reminded that friends, family, and community members may have access to the

data. At each of these points, collaborators had the opportunity to retract media or transcribed

data.

The second concern was addressed by obscuring the identities of non-collaborators shown

in photos. In the media upload instructions, collaborators were given the tools and guidance to

blur the faces of non-participants in their media. They were also explicitly instructed not to

submit any media featuring minors. I honored collaborators’ choices to publish or withhold their

media files, and I leaned into the descriptive nature of qualitative research by relaying the

necessary and relevant aspects of their media files through rich, informed descriptions.

CHAPTER IV

PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH

Following IRB approval, the researcher emailed the call for collaborators to athletics staff

at 14 institutions in the southeast. The researcher only received three responses: two saying that

IRB approval would be needed at those institutions and one agreeing to help recruit collaborators

for the project. The positive response was from an athletics academics staff member at the

researcher’s institution. Because of the timeline, the researcher chose to pursue a project solely

with collaborators from their institution. It was necessary to complete data collection before the

collaborators’ spring semester ended, as they would be graduating and transitioning out of

college. Obtaining IRB approval from other potential collaborators’ institutions would have

pushed the data collection period beyond the end of the spring semester, losing the timebound

aspect of international student-athletes’ in-college perspectives on their experiences. Working

with the most easily accessible collaborators allowed the researcher to facilitate data collection

during the last week of classes/beginning of finals week, which was the true end of collaborators’

student careers. It also testifies to how much these collaborators cared about conveying their

experiences and contributing to the improvement of the international student-athlete experience.

While the lack of collaborators from multiple institutions inherently limited the research, it also

provided focus and allowed the researcher to capitalize upon the reflective nature of this research

design.

Collaborators

The institution has 54 total actively enrolled international student-athletes, 16 of whom

are seniors or graduate students. Six collaborators contributed to the project. Three male and three

female collaborators from five countries represented five continents and five intercollegiate

athletic teams. Two of the collaborators are finishing master’s degrees, and four are finishing

bachelor’s degrees. Two collaborators self-identified as first-generation college students. Only

one of the collaborators was a transfer student; the other five have spent their entire international

student-athlete careers at a single U.S. higher education institution. All collaborators were in their

competitive seasons at the time of data collection. Each collaborator’s college career started in

2019 or 2020, meaning that they either experienced the pandemic as first-year college students or

began their college careers amid the pandemic. All collaborators are F-1 visa holders, meaning

they are subject to the non-immigrant visa regulations discussed in Chapter 2.

Every collaborator signed the optional informed consent document, agreeing to have

certain media files included in this publication. Collaborators chose three media files to be

included, allowing them to maintain agency over the ways they may be perceived. Some

collaborators had used media files taken by their institutions, but they only wanted to publish the

files they had taken themselves. Written descriptions of the other media files are used to give

additional insight into the photo elicitation interviews and the international student-athlete

experience. All non-collaborators have been blurred out of the media.

Collaborators were asked to upload 10-15 pieces of media representative of their

experiences at their institution to a private OneDrive folder, and then they were asked to

participate in a 90-minute interview to discuss their media choices and explore their personal

changes throughout their college career. Some collaborators uploaded more than 15 pieces of

media, noting how difficult it was to choose only 15 photos over such an impactful four- or

fiveyear college career. Since all collaborators attend the same institution as the researcher, two

interviews were held in person, and four interviews were held via Webex. The determining factors

were Collaborators’ availability and preference.

The table below provides contextual information about each collaborator, followed by a

presentation of each collaborator’s media and verbal insights. While researcher objectivity was

not possible in this qualitative project, please note that each collaborator’s contributions are

presented as their own personal narratives, delivered with the researcher’s informed positionality.

Figure 5

Map of Collaborators’ Home Countries

Table 2

Summary of Collaborators’ Identifying Information

Collaborator Information

Individual Collaborators’ Themes

Because it was a goal of this research design to uphold collaborators’ agency and the

uniqueness of their experiences as international student-athletes, the major theme(s) of each

collaborator’s data are reviewed before themes across all collaborators’ data are discussed.

Multiple forms of data (multimedia, interview transcripts, memos) have been analyzed by both

the collaborators and the researcher, keeping the perspectives of the collaborators central to this

discussion of results. Sensitive to the risk of unjustly painting collaborators as one-dimensional or

defining them by one facet of their experiences, the last paragraph of each collaborator’s

summary highlights the unique attributes or experiences they contributed to this project.

Collaborator 1

Collaborator 1, who will be referred to as “Ava,” is a female international student-athlete

from Australia. She is in her fifth year at her institution, where she has earned a bachelor’s degree

in marketing and is graduating with her Master of Business Administration degree. She competes

in women’s cross country, women’s indoor track, and women’s outdoor track, so she is always in

a competitive season. However, her international student-athlete experience is marred by

coaching changes, injuries, and the pandemic.

Prior to choosing which institution she would attend, Ava had been in contact with track

coaches at U.S. higher education institutions for over a year. She wanted to go to school in the

United States because the college athletic programs offered her greater resources and more

intensive training opportunities than the institutions in Australia. Still, she felt incredibly nervous

about the prospect of living in the United States, saying, “I was kinda scared of here because of

the gun situation. I feel pretty safe at home.” Her prospective track coach reassured her of his

institution’s security, and following an official visit to the institution, she committed to compete

there.

Two weeks before Ava’s flight would land in the United States, the coach with whom she

had bonded through the recruitment process took a job at another institution. Ava’s institution

rehired quickly, choosing a candidate that Ava describes as being “not a good person.” From the

start, she was not getting what she thought she would get out of her college experience. As she

simultaneously battled her first collegiate injury, she doubted that she had made the right choice

by going to the United States for college: “Especially with the bad coach we had, it was really

hard for me to stay. But it was also hard for me to leave just because I’d been injured. I felt like I

couldn’t go anywhere, I was stuck. But also, I didn’t have a lot of hope that it would get better.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused her first-year outdoor track season to be cancelled,

she was overcome with relief. She packed up her belongings and flew home, where she remained

for 10 months. During that time, her college coach was fired, and a new coach was brought in.

Although she would continue to battle injuries through the rest of her collegiate athletic career,

the stability provided by her third coach was enough of an anchor to keep her rooted at her

institution.

Ava knew that her ability to become a professional athlete had been hindered by all her

injuries. She also knew that the job market in the United States was as bad as the job market in

her home country. Even though she set aside time to participate in internships, network, and

attend career fairs, she is struggling to find a U.S. employer that will sponsor her for a work visa.

She is going to wait through the 60-day grace period following her graduation to see if she can

find a job, and then she will decide whether she wants to travel to Europe or return home to

Australia.

When Ava was at the track, she just felt like an athlete. When she was in classes, she felt

more like an international student. As a self-proclaimed social butterfly, Ava made many friends

outside of her athletic team, and she noted that she naturally gravitates toward other international

students on campus. “International people get each other better,” she said, explaining that

international students have “built the same foundation” to even arrive at a U.S. higher education

institution.

Regarding her own growth, Ava noted that she was always mature, but she took advantage

of her college years as a time to make decisions that she knew were not right, which she says has

helped her mature further. This exemplifies Ava’s engagement with the social cognitive theory of

human agency (Bandura, 1989). She influenced her own functioning through her actions. Now,

she considers herself mentally stronger with a greater appreciation for what she is capable of.

Being on her own and persevering through coaching changes and injuries has taught her to look

within herself and be more comfortable with who she is.

Collaborator 1 Media Elicitation. It is notable that Ava only uploaded two photos in

which she is the sole focus: one photo outside her residence hall, taken on her birthday, as she

prepared to fly home the following day due to the COVID-19 pandemic; and one photo of her on

campus in business professional attire, having just attended the career fair in pursuit of a job in

the US.

Ava did not appear in two of the photos she shared. One of those photos captures her

American friend picking flowers on one of their regular walks around campus, and one of those

photos features a group from her MBA cohort having a picnic on campus, for which she prepared

had sushi.

There were two action photos of Ava competing in her sport. One of those images shows

her on the starting line, next to her teammate and her coach. She chose to share this photo because

it was taken at her first competition with her third coach, and she was hopeful that this coach

would help her regain her footing, both as an athlete and a student.

Ava shared many photos from campus sporting events she attended with her friends. She

was pictured with her teammates, wearing matching t-shirts as they were being recognized on

field at halftime. She was pictured with her roommates, none of whom were actively competing

in track and field. Ava explained yet another photo from a football game, in which she is posed

with six other people – none of whom she knew before that night. Four of the people in that photo

were from Melbourne, Australia, and they had traveled to the United States to support their friend

on the football team, who also originated from Melbourne. The other two people in that photo are

also from Australia, attended a nearby university, knew Ava through mutual friends, and asked if

she could help them find tickets. That is how Ava spent Thanksgiving with six newfound Aussie

friends at an American sporting event.

Figure 6

Collaborator 1 (Ava) Pictured With an Upper-Class Student

Ava (right) is pictured with an upper-class student (left), whom she had met when she visited the

university, before deciding where she wanted to go to college. Ava said that this teammate was a

“one of the selling points” in her decision-making process. This photo was taken at Ava’s first

intramural practice meet during her first year. During her interview, Ava commented on how

much she has grown up since this photo was taken.

Figure 7

Collaborator 1 (Ava) Pictured With Her Head Coach and Training Group

Ava (first row, third from left) is pictured with her head coach and training group. This group is a

mix of male and female athletes who compete in middle-distance events. When talking about this

photo, Ava focused on what everyone else in the photo has gone on to accomplish since this

photo was taken, including earning top-10 rankings in their respective events, becoming

professional athletes, and going on to pursue graduate degrees. Ava added that the head track and

field coach (first row, far left) has been her “father figure” over the last five years. The head

coach has remained a constant in her college career, keeping her moored to the institution through

position coach changes, injuries, and the pandemic.

Figure 8

Collaborator 1 (Ava) Is Pictured With Her Teammates Who Had Also Qualified for the

Postseason Competition

Ava is pictured with her teammates who had also qualified for postseason competition. She

explained that the photo was taken during the summer months, when campus life had grown dim,

but their training had increased in preparation for regionals and nationals. She spoke fondly of the

sunsets at their practice facility, reminiscing on that imagery as a constant throughout her five-

year career at this institution. Following this training session, they all ran through the

Figure 8 (continued) sprinklers on the field. This exemplifies the ability of sport to foster a sense

of community, particularly among people of diverse backgrounds (Warner & Dixon, 2011, p. 257;

Wolf-Wendel et al., 2001). The overlap between sense of community and the interpersonal

dimension of selfauthorship provides literary support for Ava’s recognition of this moment as

impactful to her international student-athlete experience.

Collaborator 1 Themes. Ava conveyed such a positive overview of her international

student-athlete experience despite mentioning her fear of gun violence in the United States, her

many season-ending injuries, and her ever-changing dynamics with her coaches. Ava also

mentioned that she thinks higher education in the United States is “a little behind” and that it

“would’ve been harder” if she had gone to a university in her home country. She explained that

the exam-based assessment model of her college classes in the United States differs significantly

from the essay-based assessment model of the universities in Australia.

Ava also spoke about her institution’s lack of name recognition and degree valuation. She

wonders if she would have been more successful in her job search if she had attended a more

prestigious school or even a school with geographic advantages, such as public transportation or

more diverse employers. Ava mentioned her hesitance to return home because she would have to

“start over.” This speaks to institutional shortcoming of failing to adequately prepare her for

success in her home country, thereby limiting her postgraduate options.

Collaborator 2

Collaborator 2, who will be referred to as “Amani,” is a male international student-athlete

from Jamaica. He attended a NJCAA community college in the midwestern United States before

transferring to his current institution in the southeastern United States, where he spent five

semesters. He is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies, with a focus on

kinesiology and psychology. He competes in men’s indoor track and men’s outdoor track as a

middle-distance (800m) runner, and he is currently training for the Olympic trials.

Amani’s mother pushed him to go to college overseas because “Jamaica is not a

middledistance country.” As a family, they decided that going to college in the United States was

a way to advance Amani’s training and prepare him for a career as a professional athlete. He

knew his family could not afford to send him to college if he did not receive a full athletic

scholarship, so he began competing in international track events, where he drew the attention of

U.S. recruiters. Still, he could not find a four-year school that would offer him a full scholarship,

so he accepted a full ride from a community college and enrolled in spring 2020.

While he enjoyed the community college itself, the pandemic left him feeling isolated and

uncertain. “It was so depressing, during that COVID period,” he said. “I remember every detail.”

According to Amani, there were only four international students who stayed on campus through

the pandemic. He had some money with which he could have bought a plane ticket home, but the

money was “just for emergencies,” such as illness or death in the family. Through the pandemic,

he put on weight, which affected his athletic performance and, subsequently, his mental health.

Still, he knew he had to perform well to be able to transfer to a four-year institution.

Amani described the transition from junior college to Division I athletics as being “really

tough” because he was not used to the overwhelming presence of support staff and the quantity of

commitments he had, including mandatory tutoring, physical therapy, and team meals. Contrary

to the findings of Butler et al. (2020) that NJCAA institutions provided an adjustment period for

international student-athletes, Amani explained how he would have to readjust at his NCAA

institution. Looking back, he would not change anything about his college career, but he wishes

he could do it all again to better absorb and understand it, taking advantage of the resources that

he had access to while he had them.

As graduation approaches, Amani’s plan is to compete in the upcoming Olympic trials,

saying “I want to be on that plane ride to Paris.” Still, he has applied for Optional Practical

Training to give himself the option to work in the United States, should his Olympic aspirations

fall short. His hope is to find a job in the United States that will help him fund his professional

athlete journey, including agent fees and immigration lawyer fees. Amani did not give any details

about the types of jobs he would pursue, as his focus was overwhelmed by the need to run faster

than the Olympic standard.

Collaborator 2 Media Elicitation. Amani shared two videos among his media files. One

video captures his second-place finish in his first outdoor competition as an athlete at his current

institution. The other video captures his first-place finish in his last outdoor competition as an

athlete at his current institution. In this video, Amani looks around, checking his surroundings in

the last 50 meters. He explained that he was gauging how close the following competitors were,

but he was also soaking in his last collegiate competition on an indoor track.

Like Ava, Amani shared two photos in which he did not appear. One photo featured his

training partner, an international student-athlete from England, at their senior recognition night.

“He’s my brother,” Amani said. The two of them have been training together since Amani

transferred to his current institution. Amani also shared a photo of his current collegiate head

coach, seen posing with a sports reporter from Amani’s hometown. Amani said that this reporter

was instrumental in spreading awareness about Amani's accomplishments and ambitions, helping

him get recruited by U.S. institutions. These two men pose at the indoor track and field national

championships – for which Amani did not qualify. A fellow student-athlete from his institution,

knowing of the connection between him and this sports reporter, took the photo and sent it to the

Amani.

Figure 9

Collaborator 2 (Amani) Image From the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF)

World U18 Championships, Held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2017

Amani shared the above image from the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World

U18 Championships, held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2017. The collaborator was still in high school at

the time, but he credits his second-place finish at this event for jumpstarting his recruitment by

U.S. higher education institutions. It was also his first time on the continent of Africa, so he

considers this the beginning of the formation of his international student-athlete identity.

Figure 10

Collaborator 2 (Amani) Pictured Donning his University’s Name Across his Chest and his Home

Country’s Flag Around his Shoulders

Amani dons his university’s name across his chest and his home country’s flag around his

shoulders. Amani talked about this photo in reference to C.2.1., citing how far he has come

(physically, geographically, and developmentally) and how little has changed regarding his

Jamaican pride, as it remains at the forefront of his identity: “You can see the transition, too. The

different stages that I've been through.”

Figure 11

Collaborator 2 (Amani) Action Shot in his Graduation Regalia

Amani is a first-generation college student. He will miss his graduation ceremony due to a

conflict with an athletics competition, but the athletics department hosted a photoshoot so he

would still have memories in his cap and gown. Amani talked specifically about his reliance on

athletic scholarships to earn a college degree, as his full athletic scholarship to a community

college was his foot in the door. In reference to this photo, Amani said, “I'm not really a

photogenic person.” When asked why he thought that way, he explained that he is much more

comfortable being perceived through action photos than through media day events or photoshoots

for special occasions, such as graduation.

Collaborator 2 Themes. The strength of Amani’s home country ties is a noteworthy

element of his media choices. He presented a photo of a sports journalist from Jamaica, a photo

from the world championships at which he represented his country, a photo of himself draped in a

Jamaican flag during high school, and a photo of himself draped in a Jamaican flag during

college. None of the other collaborators featured their countries’ flags or used any visual

references to their home countries.

Perhaps Amani’s choices can be attributed in part to his overwhelming focus on the

upcoming Olympic trials, during which he will compete for a chance to represent his country.

Conducting this research during an Olympic year added some thought-provoking elements to the

data. Particularly in Amani’s case, one can wonder if his national pride is heightened because of

the Olympics. One can also wonder how collaborators’ postgraduate plans would be different if

they did not have the Olympics to focus on. Would they have more defined plans for starting their

careers and pursuing graduate school? Would their aspirations to become professional athletes be

as strong? This data is not meant to be generalizable nor replicable, so the time stamp of COVID-

era international student-athletes who are graduating during an Olympic year contributes a niche

but informative perspective to the existing literature.

Collaborator 3

Collaborator 3, referred to as “Karalana,” is an international student-athlete from Jamaica

who runs hurdles for indoor and outdoor women’s track. She has been at her current institution

since fall 2020, and she is completing her bachelor’s degree in business administration. Karalana

is choosing to focus on the end of her collegiate track career instead of the Olympic trials or a

professional track career. Right now, her biggest goal is to set another personal record in one of

her upcoming intercollegiate competitions. Following track and field nationals this summer,

Karalana will either begin a master’s degree program in sport administration or use her Optional

Practical Training to work in college athletics, specifically pursuing a compliance or business

management role.

Karalana is the youngest of her siblings, and she knew that she was going to find a way to

go to college in the United States. She used Niche.com to compare U.S. higher education

institutions’ graduate rates, safety information, and dining hall reviews. She took advantage of

virtual campus tours, as she was being recruited during the pandemic. In fall 2020, she arrived at

her institution, having previously only seen it though a screen. During her first semester, her poor

relationship with her roommate put a “dent” in her expectations of what college would be like.

Four years later, she is confident she made the right decision when choosing her “home away

from home,” but it is notable that the only part of her experience that she would like to redo is a

first-year interpersonal conflict with her American student-athlete roommate. At the beginning of

one’s college years, when student-athlete identity affiliation is highest (Quinaud et al., 2023), a

within-group can be especially salient in one’s navigation of the kinds of relationships they want

for the benefit of their social world (Torres & Hernandez, 2007, p. 569).

Relatedly, the biggest change Karalina has seen in herself is the development of her

problem-solving skills. Before going to college, Karalina would immediately resort to her mom’s

advice when she was unsure of how to handle a situation, and she would unquestioningly follow

her mom’s suggestions. “I can’t do that here,” she said. In college, she worked to be less sulky

and more solution based. According to Karalana, in Jamaica, they say, “There’s more than one

way to skin a cat.” Karalina would remind herself of this before taking the initiative to think

through her options and choose the one that would help her resolve her own problems. Through

this process, she has also had to become more patient with herself, allowing herself the time and

space to test different solutions to her problems. In doing so, Karalana navigated between the

second and third phases of the self-authorship continuum. She managed her family’s influence

on her decision-making process and used her informed perspectives to author her own life.

Collaborator 3 Media Elicitation. Half of the media files that Karalana chose to share

were related to the most recent indoor track and field national championships. She shared that she

was the only person from her institution to qualify for indoor nationals that year. She had

qualified for the meet twice before, but she had yet to qualify for the national final (top eight

hurdlers) until this year. She felt like her perseverance had paid off and that she was rewarded for

not letting her previous failures deter her. She mentioned how proud it made her mom to see the

photos and videos of her at indoor nationals. Because of the costs of visitor visas and travel, her

family was never able to visit during her college career. She also talked about how her

performance was helping to build her institution’s brand.

Karalana also shared many files relating to her academic accomplishments, including a

social media graphic announcing that she was named “student-athlete of the month” and a

scholar-athlete plaque that she was awarded at the end-of-year awards ceremony. When asked

how it felt to be recognized for her academic prowess, she explained that it motivated her. She

would say to herself, “Ok, [Karalana], making big steps in the classroom.” Karalana said that her

mindset for the media elicitation was to display her accomplishments, both athletically and

academically.

The rest of Karalana’s media choices represented her relationships with her teammates,

coaches, and support staff. In one image, she is speaking on stage at her institution’s track and

field alumni event. She was asked to speak as the captain of the team. In our interview, she

explained how being captain of a high school athletic team is different from being captain of a

college athletic team. At the college level, “Everyone is thinking they’re grown. Not everyone is

feeling the need to be led, but they still chose [me].”

When asked how her international identity affects her relationships with her teammates,

she articulated that the “feeling of not being from here gave [her] the drive to compete, to prove

herself.” This aligns with Love and Kim’s (2011) report that international student-athletes endorse

the opportunity to study and compete in the U.S. higher education system. She said this feeling

extended to the classroom setting as well, especially when she felt welcomed by the professor.

This contrasts with Lee and Opio’s (2011) finding that international student-athletes felt

unwelcome in the United States. Karalana said she was particularly motivated to succeed

academically because she had access to so many on-campus resources, both as an international

student and as a student-athlete. Multiple studies have reported that Division I student-athletes

believe their resources (i.e., having an athletic academic counselor, tutoring, early registration)

are viewed as special treatment and detract from non-athlete peers’ perceptions of their academic

ability (Comeaux, 2012; Knapp et al., 2001; Tran et al., 2021, p. 347; Wininger & White, 2015).

While Karalana did not speak to peers’ perceptions of her academic ability, she acknowledged the

exclusive resources she had access to because of her student-athlete identity, and she used her

resources as motivation to excel as a student. In her interview, Karalana shared a photo from the

end-of-year awards ceremony in which she posed with her athletic academic counselor. She was

particularly proud to have been awarded a scholar-athlete plaque with one of her supporters in the

audience.

Karalana also felt welcomed by her American teammates. Because there are many

Jamaicans on her team, they will often speak Patois, their national language. She feels most

embraced — “like they want to understand me” — when her teammates ask her to teach them

about her language, her phrases, or her culture. She has appreciated having different

communication opportunities that remind her of her home country and root her in her current

country. Cenzual et al. discussed one’s ability to embody both their original culture and their host

culture, saying this is a sign of successful cross-cultural adaptation (2021, p. 532). One’s ability to

effectively communicate with people from different cultures is indicative of cultural intelligence

(Cenzual et al., 2021, p. 532).

Figure 12

Collaborator 3 (Karalana) Pictured at the Indoor Track and Field National Championships

Karalana is pictured at the indoor track and field national championships. She went into the

competition ranked 14th of the 16 hurdlers, but she pushed herself to a top-eight finish in the

national final. Having qualified for nationals twice before but having never made the national

final, Karalana was proud of her perseverance and her ability to represent her university at this

level.

Figure 13

Collaborator 3 (Karalana) Poses With Her Scholar-Athlete Award Following Her Final Athletic

Awards Night

Karalana poses with her scholar-athlete award following her final athletic awards night. One

student-athlete from each team was recognized for their athletic and academic accomplishments

over the year. Karalana said this award paid tribute to all the hours she spent in tutoring and study

hall sessions.

Figure 14

Collaborator 3 (Karalana) Being Recognized on the Track Before Her Final Home Meet

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Karalana (second from left) is recognized on the track before her final home meet. She is joined

by two fellow Jamaican student-athletes (right) and the team’s recruiting coordinator (left).

Karalana described the recruiting coordinator as being a “mother figure” to her.

Collaborator 3 Themes. While I wanted to recruit as diverse a collaborator pool as

possible, I am grateful to have had two collaborators (Amani and Karalana) who come from the

same country and compete in the same sport to demonstrate that even mutual nationality is not a

strong enough commonality to understand how students construct identities in new environments

(Gargano, 2012). As such, Karalana and Amani gave vastly different answers to many of the

interview questions. Whereas Amani has the short-term goal of qualifying for Team Jamaica,

Karalana’s short-term goal is to run a personal best and finish her collegiate athletics career by

representing her institution at the national level one more time. Although she did not know

exactly what would come next for her, Karalana has applied for work authorization so she can be

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employed in the United States, applied to jobs, and explored the possibility of going to graduate

school.

Karalana’s media selections were different from those of the other collaborators in that

she only used photos and videos from her senior year of college. The rest of the collaborators

presented media that highlighted a greater time span of their college experiences, but for

Karalana, the memorable and triumphant moments that she carries with her have all happened in

the past year.

Collaborator 4

Collaborator 4, referred to as “Rhatha,” is a fourth-year international student-athlete from

Thailand who competes on the women’s golf team. She is completing her bachelor’s degree in

sport administration, and she will begin a master’s degree in kinesiology/exercise physiology in

the fall, although she will not continue her collegiate athletics career during graduate school. She

aspires to become a chiropractor or work in a medical setting, either in the United States or

Thailand.

Rhatha has the greatest cultural distance of all the collaborators on this project (Andris,

2018; Gilgunn, 2010). She knew that she wanted to go to college in the United States, so as a

junior in high school, she emailed women’s golf coaches at institutions across the country. As a

senior in high school, she qualified for a golf tournament in Las Vegas, which was the only

opportunity for coaches to watch her compete in the United States. There, she connected with the

assistant coach of the institution she would later commit to, despite never having the opportunity

to visit the campus. She was enticed by the scholarship package being offered and the fact that

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there were no other Thai players on the institution’s women’s golf team. She wanted to be in an

environment where she would meet and compete amongst women from all over the world.

Rhatha also mentioned that, prior to college, she did not know about the NCAA’s various athletic

conferences, “which is such a big deal here.”

Rhatha shared the perspective that it would be harder to be in the United States as an

international student than it is to be in the United States as an international student-athlete. She

said that just by adding the word “athlete,” it is easier to make friends. She continued to say that

international student-athletes have their own academic counselor that schedules their tutoring

sessions and registers them for classes. They also have points of contact for questions about

scholarships and financial aid. “There’s always a person who will help us,” she said. Still, she

said it has been hard to be an international student-athlete because she feels homesick as an

international student and feels incredible pressure to win as one.

Rhatha will be shedding her student-athlete identity at the conclusion of this academic

year, as she will not golf during graduate school. She said she will miss being a student-athlete,

but she is “excited to experience similar things with a different perspective.”

Pertaining to her own development, Rhatha reminisced on her initial struggles: arriving in

the United States on her own, not having her parents to help her settle into her residence hall, not

having any friends on campus yet, working on her English language skills. These challenges align

with those presented by Popp et al. (2011) as reasons for international student-athletes’ lower

adjustment rates than their American student-athlete counterparts (Newell, 2015, p. 38).

Rhatha is one of two collaborators for whom English is not their first language, and

Rhatha shared that the combination of the language barrier and her COVID-induced fears made it

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hard for her to make friends her first year. She called her parents often, navigating the 12-hour

time difference to seek their counsel. Now, she says that not having her parents here helped her

grow up. Rhatha’s understanding of her growth in the physical absence of her parents is a clear

indicator of her progression from external perspectives to internal foundations. Before coming to

college, she thought she was mature, but when she arrived at her university, she realized just how

young she was. As she has grown more comfortable with the language, she has changed the way

she talks, expresses herself, and advocates on her behalf.

Collaborator 4 Media Elicitation. Rhatha shared glimpses into her experiences as an

international student-athlete primarily through selfies, choosing not to upload any sport action

photos and uploading just a few photos taken by the institution’s athletic department’s media

team.

In these selfies, Rhatha and her teammates can be seen smiling at the beach during their

preseason team retreat or mingling with the men’s golf team at a bar. In her interview, Rhatha

explained the significance of the photo taken in the bar, saying that it showcased the first time she

pushed through her fear of contracting COVID and voluntarily went to a crowded college bar. In

doing so, she was able to form connections with the student-athletes on the men’s golf team,

whom she had seen at their shared practice facility but had never spoken with. Rhatha’s team and

institutional identity affiliation was further developed by the symbolic interactionism of her social

identities (Kibaek et al., 2022; Tafjel, 1978) report that team identification is derived from the

symbolic interactionism of social identity theories.

A group photo of the women’s golf team, its coaches, and the institution’s cheerleaders

and mascots represents the significance of the team’s recent conference championship. In only

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four years, Rhatha went from not knowing what intercollegiate athletic conferences were to

helping her team win its first conference championship in program history. In the photo, she

proudly holds a “We are champions” sign.

Rhatha shared two photos from the end-of-year athletic awards ceremony. In one photo,

she is receiving a scholar-athlete award from the donors for whom the award is named. She said

that the reward reminded her that someone is always watching and taking note of her athletic and

academic accomplishments. In the other photo, Rhatha is on stage, presenting an award to a

fellow student-athlete. Because she has a fear of public speaking, this photo is “a reminder of

how brave I am.”

She concluded the media elicitation portion of her interview with a photo of her team, all

dressed up for the awards ceremony. Because they are not wearing their team-issued gear,

Rhatha sees everyone’s individuality more clearly. “We are from different cultures, speak

different languages, believe different things, but at the end of the day, we’re a team,” she said.

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Figure 15

Collaborator 4 (Rhatha) Posed With Her Parents at an Airport in Thailand Awaiting a Flight

Back to the United States

One of the immigration challenges of being from Thailand is that the U.S. embassy only issues

visas with one year’s duration. Therefore, every time Rhatha travels home, she has to spend the

time and money to renew her visa. When asked how her parents feel about her being halfway

across the world, she said her dad tells her, “If I want to grow strong, I also have to fly pretty

far.”

Figure 16

Collaborator 4 (Rhatha) Pictured in a Selfie With Her Boyfriend During a Camping Trip

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Rhatha snapped a selfie with her boyfriend during a camping trip. Her boyfriend, who is from the

southeastern United States, has taken her camping, hiking, and fishing – activities that she never

partook in because she grew up in a big city. Her boyfriend is a graduate student at her institution,

and she wanted to include a photo of him because he affords her “mental breaks” from her golf

responsibilities.

Figure 17

Collaborator 4 (Rhatha) Posed With Three Other Thai Women Golfers

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Rhatha (far right) posed with three other Thai women’s golfers who are competing at institutions

in the United States. Every time she competes, she looks for fellow Thai players, hoping to see

friends from home. Earlier in her collegiate career, Rhatha helped recruit a Thai golfer to her

institution (far left). Trendafilova et al. (2010) advise the use of peer recruitment through

relationships based on common gender, region of the world, and sport. Speaking to the

international density of their institution’s women’s golf team, these two Thai golfers compete

alongside two golfers from Spain, two golfers from the United States, one golfer from Germany,

one golfer from South Africa, and a coach from Scotland.

Collaborator 4 Themes. Rhatha is continuing her college career as an international

student but is leaving the student-athlete identity behind her. For Rhatha, this is a planned

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transition. To help her decide what she wanted to pursue a master’s degree in, she partook in two

internships in the past year, and she secured a graduate assistantship in a slightly different field.

She does not know exactly what she wants to do in her career, but she has created opportunities to

try different things.

Through her media, Rhatha shared an inside look at the people and moments that

impacted her journey. Something to consider in future research is how to better phrase the call for

collaborators and media upload instructions to elicit just how powerful those casual selfies can be

in portraying one’s international student-athlete experience. Rhatha took advantage of setting an

interview agenda that looked at her experience from the inside out.

Collaborator 5

Collaborator 5, referred to as “Luka,” is a fourth-year international student-athlete on the

men’s tennis team. He is from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and he plans to return home upon

conferral of his bachelor’s degree in sport administration. He will try to pursue a professional

tennis career in his home country. In two years, if he cannot live off his career as a professional

tennis player, he plans to return to the United States to pursue a master’s degree, using the

$10,000 postgraduate scholarship he was awarded through his athletic conference.

Luka started playing tennis because his older brother also played, but he quickly

surpassed his brother’s skill level. To prepare him for a career as a professional tennis player,

Luka’s parents sent him to tennis academies in Croatia and Belgrade, but he returned to Bosnia

and Herzegovina to finish high school. One college coach from the United States had watched

him play in Bosnia, and the coach even met with his family afterward. However, the coach

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worked for a university that did not have a well-known tennis program, so Luka declined the

offer to play for that school, instead forging ahead with his professional aspirations.

When he graduated from high school and was ready to begin his professional career, the

pandemic began. Without professional tournaments to play, Luka again decided to look for

collegiate tennis opportunities in the states. Serendipitously, the coach he had met in Bosnia

contacted him again, saying that he had taken a job at a different university with a far more

reputable men’s tennis program. Luka committed to the school, and he and this coach have spent

the last four years together. Although Luka did not visit any colleges before deciding where to

enroll, his brother was studying engineering at another institution in the southeastern United

States, so he provided Luka with context about the international student experience at U.S.

institutions.

Luka, having a thick accent, knew that he drew the attention of students and staff at his

institution. He said that people were more hospitable because they knew he was not from here. In

his experience, professors in the United States are more willing to help students than professors in

his home country are. Their eagerness to help students learn was Luka’s favorite part of the

academic side of campus.

Just as he could see that he was treated differently, Luka could also see that American

non-athlete college students have their own issues. Namely, he pointed out that they may have

fewer scholarship opportunities and that they are responsible for planning, preparing, and paying

for their own meals. “I don’t know what it’s like to be an American,” he said. Luka’s ability to

recognize how his cultural reality is different from that of the host culture, in both positive and

negative ways, is evident of his pathway toward self-authorship. It demonstrates that he has

learned enough about his host culture and his American non-athlete peers to develop empathy for

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their challenges. Empathy, which is attributed to position relationship building (Lockwood et al.,

2014; Villadangos et al., 2016), has been shown to foster students’ academic development and

professional growth and is therefore imperative to the interpersonal dimension of self-authorship

(Mercer et al., 2012; Paro et al., 2014; Schoeps et al., 2020).

Luka recently talked to his brother about how he has changed through college. He

“started focusing more on intrinsic values,” including what he likes, what he wants, and who he

wants to be around. He became comfortable with not always doing what everyone expects him to

do, allowing himself space to try new things. His coaches noticed this as well, providing him with

opportunities to change their warmup routines and their on-court chants through his leadership.

Luka articulated that college was a choice, and he is proud to have taken advantage of all it had to

offer. He believes that he did his best for his team in every moment.

Collaborator 5 Media Elicitation. Luka took a very formal approach to the media

elicitation, sharing only photos and videos that had been captured by the institution’s athletic

department’s content creators. Accordingly, his media is deeply rooted in his student-athlete

identity. Still, each of his media selections conveyed a different story. In a photo from a previous

athletic awards ceremony, Luka, wearing a suit for the first time, talks to a reporter outside the

venue. Luka represents his team as a member of the institution’s Student-Athlete Advisory

Committee (SAAC). SAAC took measurements of its members and ordered custom business

professional attire for them to wear to the ceremony. “We felt like rockstars,” he said. Luka

shared a photo of himself on court, raising a fist in celebration as he acknowledges the packed

bleachers of the university’s tennis facility. He explained that the photo was taken at an NCAA

regional tournament event, and he felt encouraged by how many people showed up to support

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his team’s postseason bid. As his team makes its current postseason run in the NCAA

tournament, he will miss his graduation ceremony, so he shared a photo taken by the athletic

department, in which he sports his graduation regalia and tosses his cap toward the camera.

Luka stands out among the collaborators as the only one whose family came to visit him during

his college career. He described it as “worlds coming together.” His mom, brother, and brother’s

girlfriend travelled from Bosnia and Herzegovina to see him play his senior day match, and they

travelled with him to a road match in a neighboring state later that week. One of the videos Luka

shared was the video stream of his senior day match. He rewatches that video, thinking about

how hard he pushed himself knowing that his family was watching him from the front row.

The other video that Luka shared was a clip from a rivalry match. Through his first three

seasons, Luka’s team could not find a way to defeat its rival, but in his senior season, Luka’s team

fought to a dominant, 7-0 victory. Luka talked about how his investment in the rivalry grew as his

college career went on, evidencing how he adopted his institution’s sport culture. Luka chose to

share two video clips for their individual significance but also to evoke the point that his family

watched almost all his collegiate matches through video live streams. It was a way for them to

stay connected, especially with Luka’s busy schedule.

Figure 18

Collaborator 4 (Luka) Pictured With Three Balkan Teammates

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Luka (second from left) is pictured with three Balkan teammates. Their entire team roster only

has nine athletes on it, and four of them grew up within three hours of each other. Luka

appreciates the opportunities to speak his native language (Serbian) with his teammates, and he

takes immense pride in having helped recruit them on behalf of his institution. Luka’s mom even

called the other athletes’ moms to help ease their minds about the international student-athlete

experience in the United States.

Figure 19

Collaborator 4 (Luka) With Teammate and Friend

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When Luka (right) first arrived on campus in the fall of 2020, he was quarantined with a firstyear

student from Spain. Four years later, as the only two seniors on the team, they formed a bond that

transcends geographic barriers. Luka spoke highly of his teammate and friend, saying,

“We all know, if it comes down to [him], he’s going to win.”

Figure 20

Collaborator 4 (Luka) Pictured With His Coaches

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Luka (center) is pictured with his coaches. The assistant coach (left) is the one who visited with

him and his family in Bosnia and Herzegovina years ago, and Luka credits that coach as both the

reason he got here and stayed here.

Collaborator 5 Themes. Luka is pursuing a career as a professional athlete, but he has set

certain guidelines to gauge his own success. He is aware that he will have to rely on his parents to

help him fund his professional tennis career. He has chosen to return to his home country to train

and compete, in contrast to Amani, who will stay in the United States in hopes of finding a job

that will help him fund his professional track career. In two years, if Luka is not making a livable

wage as a professional athlete, he will return to college in the United States to pursue a master’s

degree, and he has already been awarded scholarship funding to support himself.

By using video clips of his tennis matches, Luka presented his international collegiate

student-athlete experience through his own perspective and his family’s perspective. This was an

artful way to open a conversation about what familial support looks like for an international

student-athlete, especially with the only collaborator whose family was able to visit them in the

United States during their college years.

Collaborator 6

Collaborator 6, referred to as Wendell, hails from Trinidad and Tobago. He is a graduate

student completing his master’s degree in information systems, and he earned a bachelor’s degree

in geoscience from the same institution. He is a member of the men’s track and field team, but his

javelin career ended just a few weeks ago, when he chose to medically retire from the sport. He

said that his mental health suffered as he battled persistent injuries over the last two years, and he

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finally had to choose himself over everything else. Since retiring, he has shifted his focus to

academia, pursuing work experience opportunities for which he did not previously have time.

Wendell had not planned to go to college in the United States, primarily because he did

not know much about collegiate track and field in the United States. Instead, he explored the

possibility of becoming a professional athlete and he considered colleges in the United Kingdom.

His friends who were already participating in track and field at U.S. colleges and universities

convinced him to take official visits to a few schools, and after visiting his future institution’s

campus, he closed his recruitment and signed his commitment papers. For Wendell, the strength

of the track and field program and the offering of his desired degree program were equally strong

factors in his decision.

A first-generation college student, Wendell will finish his master’s degree this year, and

then he plans to pursue a PhD in database design/administration/security. He wants to continue

experiencing other cultures, so he is willing to go anywhere in the world to earn this degree.

“Experience is the best teacher,” he explained.

Collaborator 6 Media Elicitation. Through his media selections, Wendell highlighted his

vast interests and the people he experiences them with. Wendell shared a photo taken from the

student section of the football stadium on campus, which he snapped at his first American

football game. He had seen football on television, but he did not fully understand its magnitude in

the United States until he experienced it first-hand. This echoes the existing literature on the ways

the televising of U.S. college sports affects branding and name recognition abroad, particularly

pertaining to the recruitment of international student-athletes (Cole, 2019; Hanson, 2020; Love &

Kim, 2011; Otto et al., 2020).

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He shared a blurry photo in which he is dancing with his friends in a kitchen. They are all

dressed up for Halloween, which is not celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago. He chose a photo from

a former college teammate’s wedding, which was a reunion for Wendell and those who had

graduated before him. He uploaded multiple group photos from birthday dinners and celebratory

outings with teammates.

Wendell highlighted his journey with music by submitting a video of his piano

performance at a local senior living facility. His first year, he had stumbled upon a piano in the

campus chapel. When he needed a change of scenery, he would escape to the chapel, teaching

himself to play the piano. The video captures the first time he played in front of a crowd. For

Wendell, learning to play the piano was an example of finding things he genuinely enjoys. He

spoke about this in relation to his growth throughout college, saying that the piano has become

just as central to his self-identification as track and field. Being self-taught also made him a

“more aware human being,” as he started thinking about his own “why.”

Experiential learning was at the forefront of Wendell’s priorities for himself and for his

fellow international student-athletes. He included two photos from a networking/shadowing event

to start the conversation around pre-graduation work experience for international studentathletes:

“If I had known what I know now, I would’ve started applying for internships and coops from the

time I got here.” He pointed out that American college students have more flexibility with their

postgraduate timelines, but “for us, it’s too late.” Early retirement from his sport gave him an

extra month to focus on what comes next for him, which has also helped him improve his mental

health.

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Figure 21

Collaborator 6 (Wendell) “A Celebration of Friendship”

Wendell described so many of his media files as “celebrations.” This photo is a “celebration of

friendship.” Wendell (second from left) embraces the teammates who are “sister and brothers

now.” The group had been wandering through a department store, found a shirt that caught their

eyes, and bought four of them. They changed into their new shirts and went out to dinner.

Figure 22

Collaborator 6 (Wendell) Pictured With His Coach

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Wendell is pictured with his coach, with whom he has trained for his entire collegiate career. He

chose this photo to honor their relationship and to draw attention to his bald head. When his aunt

passed away from cancer in his home country, he shaved his head to memorialize her from the

United States. He had never shaved his head before, so it was a personal exercise in getting

comfortable being uncomfortable.

Figure 23

Collaborator 6 (Wendell) a Birthday Celebration With Teammates

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Wendell (seated at the head of the table) coordinated his birthday at a local restaurant with his

teammates. Understanding what it is like to be away from home for birthdays and holidays,

international student-athletes from nine different countries came together to celebrate him.

Collaborator 6 Themes. As explored in Chapter 3, one’s athlete identity refers to their

role as an individual or team competitor (Brewer et al., 1993). However, this collaborator

medically retired from competition in the middle of his last outdoor track and field season, about

one month prior to data collection. His early sport retirement is highly pertinent to his

selfauthorship journey because it fundamentally changed his sense of self. In his interview, he

explained that he still identifies as a student-athlete because he still has responsibilities to the

team: leadership, support, mentorship. Although he would love to be using the rest of his

eligibility, he expressed gratitude for his retirement, saying that it has given him extra time to

explore what comes next for him before he graduates. He is authoring his life by exploring his

newly reframed identities, using his remaining time as a student to align his goals with his new

reality. Although he has not yet fully shed his athletic identity (Grove et al., 1993; Reifsteck et al.,

2016; Smith & Hardin, 2018), Wendell demonstrates how a shift in identity can cause a shift in

values (Baxter Magolda, 2001). He explained that he was always focused on his specific

academic program and starting a career in a specific industry, so his retirement accelerated his

self-authorship development, rather than reverting him to the uncertainty of the crossroads phase.

He did not just retire from collegiate athletics; he has retired from javelin as a sport. He

will no longer compete at the Olympic trials this summer nor pursue a career as a professional

athlete. Instead, he intends to pursue a PhD in information systems. When asked where he would

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want to study for his doctorate, he said he would go anywhere in the world, as he is far from done

with learning about other cultures. He attributes this wanderlust to the diversity of his home

country, which also eased his acculturation process when he first started college.

It was unique for this collaborator to acknowledge postgraduate work and education

opportunities beyond the dichotomy of the United States and one’s home country. In this way, he

plans to extend his non-immigrant identity in a new context. Some collaborators had mentioned

the possibility of going to college in the U.K. (instead of the United States) and having plans to

backpack through Europe following graduation (instead of seeking employment in the United

States or one’s home country), but, besides Collaborator 5, no one mentioned the possibility of a

third place as a semi-permanent next step.

Themes Across Collaborators’ Data

Much of the literature on international students and student-athletes follows a “student

lifecycle” from the time they are recruited to the time they graduate. This section is organized

similarly, looking at collaborators’ college recruitment experiences, the COVID-induced

challenges they faced in their first few years of college, the relationships they forged as they built

their support structures, and their assessments of their own growth, relative to their postgraduate

plans. These sections and subsections were derived from the data analysis conducted in Nvivo,

during which data was organized chronologically and then by frequency of evidence of

overarching themes. Throughout the data analysis, the four phases of the self-authorship

continuum provided a baseline for the chronology as well as a reference for salient

identityshaping experiences in the various phases.

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Overview

Collaborators rarely felt both their international identity and their student-athlete identity

simultaneously. Instead, they flipped between feeling each identity more saliently. Many of them

chose to go to college to be student-athletes, but then they had to engage in the difficult,

COVIDera visa processes as international students. After they arrived, they felt like student-

athletes around their teammates, but they felt like international students in the classroom. A few

of the collaborators explained that both identities are causes for attention, identifiably by their

athletic department-issued gear or their accents. As they neared the end of their international

studentathlete careers, they had to learn to balance their identities more evenly, seeking to make

the most of their final college competitions while understanding that they need to know what

comes after graduation.

None of the collaborators mentioned frustrations with NIL nor the ability of their

American teammates to earn money in ways they cannot. In fact, all collaborators spoke highly of

the benefits provided to them by the athletic department, including meals, tutoring, massages,

physical therapy, and business professional attire. Ava had cited these resources as one of her

reasons for choosing to go to school in the United States. Had she stayed in her country to train

for a professional athletics career, she would have paid out of pocket for those types of expenses.

Still, as some universities push toward employment status and employee protections for

studentathletes, the unintended impacts on international student-athletes must be considered

(Bayh et al., 2024). Student-athlete employment status would contradict international students’

visas, which only allow study and some study-related employment. They would need work visas,

most of which only allow part-time study.

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The two primary revenue-generating NCAA sports are football and men’s basketball,

which have some of the lowest numbers of international student-athletes (NCAA, 2020). This

could explain why international student-athletes are overlooked in student-athlete employment

conversations, but it does not negate the reality that they would still be affected by any changes in

student-athlete employment. As mentioned in Chapter 1, there is a growing chasm between

American and international student-athletes, and future research on international studentathletes’

identity-shaping experiences should account for the differentiation between American and

international teammates’ circumstances. Namely, benefits like NIL will affect all phases of all

student-athletes’ student lifecycles, starting with their incentivization to commit to a certain

institution in the United States.

While language barriers, cultural differences, and mental health challenges can pose

threats to international students’ success, the six collaborators viewed those potential barriers with

optimism. They code switched their language to best connect with the people with whom they

were interacting. Code switching refers to the alternating use of two or more languages

(Weinrich, 1986, p. 87), and it is used frequently between people who share codes, such as

teammates who share a native language (Basabrin, 2019). In the self-authorship context, code

switching is illustrative of maintaining one’s cultural values within the context of their diverse

environment – a marker of the final stage on the self-authorship continuum. These collaborators

adopted some cultural differences and took opportunities to share their own cultures, and they

navigated their mental health challenges by choosing themselves above all else.

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Recruitment

Each collaborator had a slightly different reason for choosing to pursue higher education

institution in the United States. Some were able to physically tour the campus before making their

decision, and some did not have that option, either due to COVID or the costs associated with

visitor visas and travel. As is widely researched, a combination of push and pull factors are

influential in international student-athletes' college selection processes, especially when they

come from national systems in which academics and athletics are not mixed (Chalip et al., 1996;

McMahon (1992); Mazzarol & Soutar (2002); Popp et al., 2011, p. 177). None of the

collaborators on this project reported issues with NCAA eligibility pertaining to amateurism

(Stewart, 2013).

Bale (1991) reported limited training opportunities and low competition levels in one’s

home country as push factors. These sentiments were echoed by all the collaborators. Bale had

been criticized by Jones et al. (2008) for pushing a U.S.-centric sport narrative using data from

international student-athletes from one region of the world competing in two sports. However,

these collaborators from five sports and five continents lend credibility to Bale’s statement about

push factors.

Bale identified pull factors as coaches/friends in the US, academic reputation of an

institution, and the athletic reputation of the institution. All the collaborators identified a

relationship with a coach as a prominent factor in their decision to choose their institution. Popp

et al. (2011) specified that the personality of the head coach was a top factor in the

decisionmaking process, but collaborators clarified that they had been recruited by assistant

coaches, so they prioritized relationships with and appraisals of assistant coaches instead of head

coaches.

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Popp et al.’s (2011) claim that athletic scholarship is a top factor in international student-athletes'

college selection process was echoed by Amani, who would not have gone to college if he did not

earn a full scholarship.

Some collaborators knew friends who were already in the United States. as international

student-athletes, and one collaborator’s older sibling was attending a university in the

southeastern United States as an international student. Wendell mentioned that he made his

decision because his institution had the degree program he wanted to pursue, along with a

reputable track program. None of the other collaborators indicated academic reputation as being

part of their decision-making process. However, Ava retrospectively attributed her struggles to

find jobs/internships to her institution’s lack of academic reputation, specifically in her field of

study (business). In a recent qualitative study of international student-athletes’ college

decisionmaking processes, Romsa et al. (2024) found that all eight of their participants prioritized

academic reputation/availability of academic major as their top factor. Pertaining to the

conversation about the purpose of higher education, many of the collaborators described the

attainment of a college degree as a path toward social advancement and personal prestigebuilding,

but none of them indicated these were reasons for attending higher education institutions in the

United States. This represents the ways international student-athletes’ purpose shifts from the

beginning to the end of their college years. The collaborators did not report social advancement

and personal prestige-building as pull factors to U.S. higher education institutions, but they

developed an awareness of these factors as they progressed toward graduation. This may speak to

international student-athletes’ unfamiliarity with U.S. higher education, and it may

speak to the types of priorities international student-athletes develop after they have gained

familiarity with the system.

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Jones et al. (2008) and Bale (1991) said that athletic reputation (including competition

level, strength of sport season schedule, and athletic conference membership) is the top motivator

in international student-athlete recruitment, but that was not necessarily corroborated by these

collaborators. All six placed greater emphasis on the role of their relationships with recruiters

than on the training/competition they would partake in based on their institution’s athletic

reputation. Interestingly, Luka’s relationship with the coach who visited him in his home country

was not a strong enough pull factor for him to enroll at an institution that was not well known for

its tennis program. It was not until the coach moved to a larger institution with a more defined

tennis reputation that Luka decided to begin his international student-athlete experience.

Jones et al.’s additional pull categories of desire for independence (from home country

and parental influence) and environmental attractiveness (location of university, size of the city in

which it is located, and the weather/climate of that city) were mentioned by collaborators during

their interviews. None of the collaborators spoke poorly of their home country nor verbalized a

desire to escape from it, but some collaborators, including Luka and Karalana, expressed desires

to establish themselves as individuals, relying less on their parents both emotionally and

financially. Wendell chose his institution because of its size, recognizing that he would not have a

car to get around and saying that he did not want to feel like he was drowning in a big city. Ava

explained that she had no idea where her institution was located; she had asked the coach who

recruited her if she would be near a beach. Among the student-athlete collaborators in this

research project, it was clear that environmental attractiveness as a pull factor is heavily

intertwined with a prospective international student-athlete's ability to visit the school before

committing to it.

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It is worth directing so much attention to these international student-athletes’ recruitment

and college selection processes because none of them transferred from the university; they will

each walk away with at least one degree from the university. In 2022, the NCAA published a

report that 25% of international student-athletes transfer after their first year, compared to 14% of

American student-athletes (Ifill et al., 2022a, 2022b). Thus, it is surprising and remarkable that

none of the collaborators transferred from their NCAA Division I institution. This provides a

chance to expand on this research and examine these questions as part of a later study examining

institutional retention and graduation of international student-athletes. From a self-authorship

perspective, a later study of international student-athletes who had transferred between NCAA

Division I institutions could provide insight into the ways student dissatisfaction, transfer

recruitment, change in environment, and reacclimation are crossroads that international

studentathletes must navigate as they move toward authorship of their lives.

COVID Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic affected each collaborator differently. Wendell, Ava, and

Amani were in the United States when the pandemic shut down colleges and universities in

March 2020. Wendell did not talk about COVID at any point in his photo elicitation interview.

Ava talked about the relief she felt when COVID ended her track season, affording her an

opportunity to go home and reevaluate how she wanted to proceed with her athletic and academic

career. Amani talked about how COVID stranded him at his community college, leaving him

isolated and depressed.

Karalana, Rhatha, and Luka started college in fall 2020. The pandemic affected

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Karalana’s ability to visit campus before committing, and it lengthened her visa appointment wait

time at the embassy in her country. The spread of the virus struck fear in Rhatha, precluding her

from participating in group activities and making friends during her first year. When the

pandemic cancelled all opportunities for him to launch his professional tennis career, Luka

jumped on the opportunity to continue developing his skills by attending a university in the

United States – something he would not necessarily have done if not for the pandemic.

Quinaud et al. (2023) reported that student-athlete identity affiliation was highest at the

beginning of participants’ undergraduate careers, but the research did not address how the effects

of COVID (cancelled sporting competitions, travel to one’s home country, feelings of isolation)

impacted this identity affiliation (p. 885).

Revisiting the retention perspective, it is noteworthy that none of the collaborators

transferred from the university in the wake of COVID’s challenges. Even though 25% of

international student-athletes transfer after their first year, only one of the collaborators was a

transfer student, and he transferred to his four-year institution after earning an associate degree at

a community college (Ifill et al., 2022a, 2022b). Drawing on the point that Ava made, one must

ponder whether these international student-athletes stayed at their institution because they were

satisfied or because they were stuck.

Relationships

Family at Home

The strongest theme among all collaborators’ media and interviews was the importance of

relationships. Interpersonal relationships are specifically designated as a prong of the

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selfauthorship continuum, but in general, self-authorship development does not occur in a

vacuum.

Students’ actions, interactions, and environments affect the ways they make meaning of their

worlds (cognitive), the ways their world shapes their sense of self (intrapersonal), and the ways

they form relationships that benefit their social worlds (interpersonal; Hernández,

2016). Collaborators conveyed their perspectives on the different types of relationships that have

had the most influence on their experience, generally starting with their family’s role in their

sport careers and their decisions to pursue higher education in the United States. Karalana knew

that she wanted to go to college in the United States, and she knew she had her mother’s support

because training opportunities for hurdlers in Jamaica were limited. Amani had less conviction

about going to college in the United States, but his mother pushed him because Jamaica is not

known for its professional middle-distance runners, and she wanted him to have opportunities to

better his athletic ability.

Luka is in the middle of the spectrum of collaborators’ family influence on their college

decision-making processes. He wanted to go to college in the United States because COVID had

limited his professional playing opportunities. He finalized his decision after a U.S. college tennis

coach watched him play in his home country and then visited with his whole family at their house

following the tournament. Now, Luka’s mother helps recruit other Balkan tennis players to attend

U.S. institutions by sharing her perspectives with those players’ parents.

Ava and Wendell expressed the least family influence in their recruitment and college

selection processes. They chose their institution for its training opportunities, resources, and

degree programs. Rhatha first heard about the possibility of playing collegiate golf in the United

States from some of the older students on her high school golf team. This piqued her interest, and

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she initiated her own recruitment process by emailing coaches at institutions all over the United

States.

In all collaborators’ cases, they made their college decisions at home, in proximity of their

support networks (Smith & Khawaja, 2011; Zhang & Goodson, 2011). In stark contrast, though,

they rarely, if ever, got to see their support networks during their college careers. Luka is the only

collaborator whose family travelled to the United States to watch him compete as an international

student-athlete. That visit occurred shortly before data collection, in the final months of Luka’s

college career. Through their interviews, all the collaborators made it abundantly clear that they

have had to seek out familial figures and build their own families in their college environments.

“Family” At School

Wendell built a “family” of international student-athletes to celebrate his birthday,

exemplifying Rodriguez’s (2014) position that international student-athletes form strong

relationships with other international student-athletes, regardless of team or country of origin.

Karalana and Amani built “families” of their Jamaican teammates to stand on the track beside

them on their senior day. Ava built “family” outside of athletics, calling upon her roommates and

graduate school cohort to keep her grounded. Rhatha built a “family” out of her fellow Thai

golfers in the United States and her American, non-athlete boyfriend. Luka built a “family” with

the coaches, for whom he has played for four years, and his fellow senior international tennis

student-athlete, with whom he started his college career in a six-week quarantine. Interwoven

through collaborators’ chosen families are monocultural, multicultural, and bicultural

relationships, attesting to the spectrum of interpersonal relationships international studentathletes

engage in at their institutions (Gómez et al., 2014).

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Collegiate athletics staff have high turnover rates (Taylor et al., 2019). Ava explained the

harmful effects of coaching changes; Wendell and Luka spoke to the gravitational effects of

having the same coach from recruitment to graduation. Considering the idea of Baghurst et al.

(2018) that coaches of international student-athletes have a heightened obligation to act in loco

parentis, staff turnover can be especially threatening to student persistence and success. Coaches

were not the only staff members who impacted collaborators’ college experiences and personal

development. Karalana credited her athletic academic advisor for helping her thrive in the

classroom, and she looked to her team’s recruiting coordinator – who has only been with the

institution for one year – as a mother figure. Rhatha acknowledged her athletic academic advisor

for inspiring her to pursue a graduate assistantship in athletics academics. Ava considered her

head coach to be a father figure.

Particularly through their media, collaborators spoke so highly of the friends who have

become family, even uploading media just to talk about a teammates’ poise under pressure or

accomplishments on the biggest stages. For these collaborators, sports were a way to form bonds

with others (Anderson & Stone, 1981), and their belonging to their team social groups had

identity-informing effects on their self-concept. Thus, social identity theory can be used to

understand how individuals relate to and interact with the world (Kim et al., 2021; Kim et al.,

2022), which speaks to the third tenet of Baxter Magolda’s self-authorship framework. My

takeaway from this aspect of the research was that international student-athletes invest deeply

in their relationships. Just as they seek support from others, they are quick to return the favor

and give credit where credit is due. They expressed such genuine pride in their friends.

One’s college experience does not take place in a vacuum. It is inevitably impacted by the quality

of one’s relationships, and these collaborators masterfully conveyed the weight of their

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relationships. This directly addresses my first research question about how international

studentathletes' experiences in U.S. higher education institutions shape their identities, and it

legitimizes the relevance of agency in this exploration of collaborators’ self-authorship journeys.

The uniqueness of each international student-athlete's experience hinges upon one’s actions and

interactions. This is also why international student development theories are futile (Gargano,

2012); it is the interpersonal relationships that play the biggest role in shaping international

student-athletes' identities. It is not the institution, its location, its academic prowess, or its

athletic prestige. It is the people power of those institutions, from the students to the faculty to the

staff, that are most impactful. With those people, international student-athletes are establishing

social circles, negotiating relationships, and living an interdependence between their personal

culture and their host culture (Hernández, 2016).

Professional Relationships

The NCAA Think Tank, led by international student-athletes, identified four stages of

international student-athlete challenges: pre-arrival, first-year transitions, sustained support, and

graduation preparation. International student-athletes will progress through these four

chronological stages, whereas they will not necessarily progress through all four stages of

selfauthorship. Still, their navigation of challenges associated with pre-arrival, first-year

transitions, sustained support, and graduation preparation will catalyze their progression toward

selfauthorship.

For example, Think Tank participants and collaborators on this project indicated

graduation preparation as their most pressing need. In the final stage of their student-athlete

journeys, the ease of one’s transition out of college is linked to their ability to understand how

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their world shapes their sense of self (Torres and Hernandez, 2007, p. 569). The Think Tank

identified the following as graduation preparation shortcomings: lack of awareness and

understanding of employment opportunities, including pre-graduation internships/co-ops and

post-graduation work authorization (NCAA International, 2021). The six collaborators made clear

that awareness was not the issue. They understand how their non-immigrant visa status has

impacted the opportunities for which they qualify. Wendell specifically said that he understands

why the U.S. immigration system makes it difficult for non-immigrant visa holders to work in the

United States, but he wished he knew how he could capitalize upon the work authorization he did

qualify for. Then, it was the restrictions of collaborators’ non-immigrant visas and their athletic

schedules that left them without the time to complete internships. Charitonidi and Kaburakis

(2022) also reported employment and bureaucracy as one of the four main challenges of

international student-athletes' transition processes, aligning with collaborators’ remarks about

gaining work experience within the restrictions of their non-immigration visa regulations.

The collaborators had all attended career fairs, being sure to ask employers about work

sponsorship opportunities. These inquiries were often unsuccessful, contributing to feelings of

hopelessness. Karalana had a professor who told her that it was normal, even for American

students, to receive one hundred rejections or to be ghosted by one hundred employers before

even getting an interview. While Karalana did not want to hear this at the time, it now comforts

her as she actively continues to apply to jobs in the United States.

Professional relationships comprise the area with which collaborators wished they had

more experience, positing that they would have more success in their job searches if they had

done more networking and experiential learning before graduating. Wendell was most outspoken

about this topic, specifically asking me what I could do in my professional role to support

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international student-athletes’ career preparation. Herein lies potentially the most impactful

opportunity to come from this research: for athletic staff and international services staff to work

collaboratively to support international student-athletes' ability to gain pre-graduation work

experience. One recommendation for practitioners that will be further developed in the fourth

section of this chapter is the need to listen to students when they tell us exactly what they need to

be successful. Wendell gave a direct response to the unspoken research question of how prepared

he feels for postgraduate success, and he has called upon practitioners to better prepare

international student-athletes like himself.

Karalana and Rhatha both participated in their institution’s athletic department internship

program, which is designed for student-athletes to gain professional experience in athletics staff

careers. While this relates to each of their degree programs, it does not help students like Wendell,

who have very defined ideas of what they want to study and the non-athletics careers they want to

pursue. Wendell and Ava talked about going to the career fairs offered by their institution, but, for

full-time work, they could not get past the barrier of employers whose companies do not sponsor

work visas.

Postgraduate Plans

Their struggles with developing professional relationships contributed to collaborators’

uncertainty about their next steps. Rhatha has been accepted to a graduate degree program and

has accepted a graduate assistantship to start in the fall. Karalana has applied for work

authorization but has not been approved, nor has she found a job. Wendell plans to pursue a PhD,

but he has not decided where or when he will embark on that journey. Ava, Amani, and Luka

spoke of their careers in broad strokes, only knowing the general directions they are heading.

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Foster and Lally (2021) found that international student-athletes were better prepared for

postgraduate sport endeavors than non-sport careers, and the data from this research project

supports that claim.

August (2020) devised a “Levels of Career Readiness and Accompanying Features” table

to classify student-athletes as career ready, semi-career ready, and minimally or not career ready.

While I am not going to obscure collaborators’ self-perceptions by placing them in those

categories, I will note that some of August’s accompanying features were matches the

postgraduate preparation themes in this project, including the following:

•Career ready o Has clear expression of specific career interests o Has

developed a network of job contacts o Has begun pursuing specific

job opportunities or internships

•Semi-career ready o Has expressed some career interests but specifics

may be vague o Has general plan about how to achieve career goal

•Minimally or not career ready o Specific career interests are unknown

o No behavior directed toward preparing for job search o No

behavior directed toward attaining internship or relevant job

experience

(August 2020, p. 182).

The concerning theme is the generalized inability of collaborators to articulate what

comes next for them. Comparatively, their graduating American counterparts may be in the exact

same position, but as the collaborators have pointed out, international students do not have the

same freedom and flexibility to wait for a job or a graduate school acceptance letter.

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International students have a 60-day grace period following their graduation, during which time

they need to apply and be approved for work authorization, pursue another degree, or leave the

country. In this project, the self-authorship framework is used to understand how international

student-athletes move from being externally influenced to relying on their internal foundations.

Are institutions preparing international student-athletes to be societal leaders? If they are

graduating and are still unable to self-define and communicate their short-term goals, then the

institution may have failed them. The institution may have taken advantage of their athletic

abilities without investing in their holistic development. They may have been great athletes, and

they may have been great students, but will they be successful, powerful, impactful, and

transformative alumni? In this context, preparedness for the future and progression toward

selfauthorship are intertwined developmental markers. Students who graduate and at least have a

plan for their immediate next step appear far more poised to be internally motivated societal

leaders than students who graduate without a strong enough sense of self to define what they may

want to pursue next.

Another theme pertaining to their non-immigrant status is the reality that these

collaborators do not necessarily plan to return to their home countries. Luka does intend to return

home after graduation, but if his professional athlete career in Bosnia and Herzegovina is

unsuccessful, he will return to study in the United States. Wendell would go anywhere in the

world for his PhD, and Ava is open to returning home if she cannot find a job in the United States.

Karalana is going to do whatever it takes to stay in the United States, whether that is working or

staying in school. Amani also has vague plans to stay in the United States by finding a job,

primarily to fund his professional athlete aspirations. Rhatha fears returning to Thailand and

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starting over, but she has bought herself at least two more years in the United States by pursuing a

master’s degree.

While consular officers would disapprove of the collaborators’ lack of home country ties

and return plans, there is something to be said for authoring one’s life despite the federal

regulations to which one is subject. The collaborators have not yet violated any regulations

pertaining to their legal presence in the United States, but the clock is running out for them to

either extend their legality or forfeit their presence and by returning home.

Personal Growth

To conclude the interview, collaborators were explicitly asked how they think they have

changed through their college careers. In their responses, many of the collaborators switched the

diction from “changed” to “grown.” Ava and Rhatha spoke about feeling mature for their ages

before college started. For Ava, college was an opportunity to test her maturity by making her

own decisions that she knew were not right, just to acquire those experiences. For Rhatha, college

made her question how mature she really was. In addition to becoming more patient, Karalana

said she became friendlier, largely by adopting the southern hospitality she was experiencing.

Luka said he became more social, using the attention that he received as an athlete and an

international student to form different friend groups. Wendell grew by dabbling in music and

teaching himself at his own pace. Amani reported knowing that he has changed but being unable

to wrap his mind around the ways he has changed. The collaborators engaged with the question to

various extents, but their responses can be directly connected to their journeys toward self-

authorship. With their perceptions of their personal growth in mind, below are insights on each

collaborator’s journey to self-authorship.

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Collaborator 1

Despite all the challenges she faced during her college career, Ava kept choosing to return

and persist. Coaching changes, the pandemic, and injuries were all crossroads that she had to

traverse, many of those occurring in her first year of college – a time when 25% of international

student-athletes transfer (Ifill et al., 2022a, 2022b). Instead of transferring, she rooted herself by

fostering community with fellow athletes, fellow international students, fellow business students,

and her roommates. Revisiting Ava’s media, there were so many characters in

her story, and she connected with each of them in unique ways.

Ava repeatedly gave herself reasons to persevere. She connected with other Australian

students in the southeast, she advocated for herself at on-campus career fairs, she showcased her

love of sushi-making, and she choose how and with whom she would spend her free time. In

college, she created a life for herself in which the challenges could not outweigh her satisfaction

with and presentation of who she is. For these reasons, Ava is a strong representation of an

international student-athlete who progressed to the fourth stage of the self-authorship continuum

through her experiences at a U.S. higher education institution.

Collaborator 2

Amani is the one collaborator who identified as an international student-athlete even

before he began considering committing to a track & field program at a U.S. higher education

institution. He has seen himself as a Jamaican runner since high school. With that knowledge, it is

unsurprising that Amani still primarily sees himself as a Jamaican runner. In the interview, it was

difficult to get him to talk about anything other than the upcoming Olympic trials, and I initially

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perceived that as a lack of progression toward self-authorship. I thought that his comfortability

with the identifiers he has always known were preventing him from more wellrounded

preparation for life after sport, even if that life did not begin immediately after graduation.

Perhaps the alternative is true. Maybe Amani is so secure in his internal foundations, knowing

exactly who he is and what he wants for his world, that his college experiences could not have

done anything to throw him from his trajectory. No collaborator’s postgraduate goals are more

valid or more notable than any others, so it would be unfair to say that Amani’s Olympic

aspirations are anything other than his manifestation of the story he is writing for himself.

Collaborator 3

As evidenced in her interview, Karalana was very aware of the ways in which she grew as

an individual. She learned how to fight her own battles, relying less on her mother’s advice

because of the physical distance between them. She opened herself to new perspectives,

understanding that there is more than one way to solve a problem. She compared her host culture

to her home culture and decided which aspects of her host culture she wanted to adopt, all while

continuing to share her home culture with her American teammates. She presented herself as

being so fully formed and aware of her potential to succeed following the loss of her international

student-athlete identity. Perhaps her desire to work in college athletics helped ease the loss of her

identity, as she does not plan to leave that environment completely. Even if that career path does

not work out at this time, she is prepared to pursue her master’s degree and continue evolving as

an international student. The epistemological (Baxter Magolda, 2001) and cognitive (Hernández,

2016) dimensions of the self-authorship continuum can be more difficult to recognize, but

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Karalana exemplified how self-authorship can only be achieved if one is open to evaluating their

meaning-making processes to start the shift from external validation to internal foundations.

Collaborator 4

Rhatha, who jumpstarted her own recruitment process because she was that dedicated to

playing golf at a U.S. higher education institution, has evolved to the point at which she is

comfortable leaving her student-athlete identity behind, only carrying forward her student

identity. The athletics-related pull factors that brought her here are no longer the factors that are

keeping her here. She recognizes that it will probably be harder to be an international student than

it was to be an international student-athlete because she will no longer have access to the support

services she is used to, including an athletics academic advisor and priority registration. To ease

her transition, she has created her own support structures. Cognitively, she talked about feeling

ready for the next phase of her college career. She knows it will be different, but she welcomes

those differences as opportunities to continue learning and growing. Interpersonally, she relies on

her boyfriend, an American graduate student, to remind her of the vast world beyond the

international student-athlete experience. Professionally, she has participated in varying

internships so she can better understand what she wants to do following graduate school.

Although her progression toward the fourth stage of the self-authorship continuum is

subconscious, her actions are deliberate, and she will continue to build her internal foundations

through graduate school, despite the loss of her student-athlete identity.

Collaborator 5

Luka exemplifies U.S. consular officers’ perceptions of the international student college

experience. Specifically, he is tied to his home country by his aspirations to be a professional

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tennis player, and, having graduated, he is returning home to pursue them. As these collaborators

demonstrated, international student-athletes do not necessarily have plans to leave the United

States, even as the clock ticks closer to their graduation ceremonies. Whereas Amani was

laserfocused on the future, Luka’s goal of becoming a professional athlete did not overshadow his

gratitude for the international student-athlete experience. He talked about how his coaches’ trust

in him as a team leader built his confidence, how his status as a student-athlete afforded him

opportunities that he would not have had as an international student, and how he held tight to his

internal foundations while acting in the best interest of his team. He knew that he would one day

return to Bosnia & Herzegovina to start his individual pathway toward a professional tennis

career, but he maximized his international student-athlete experiences by practicing leadership,

taking advantage of his resources, and living in the moment. Although he has begun to chase his

athletic dreams, he is disciplined enough to know that if he cannot make a living as a professional

tennis player after two years, he will pursue further education, for which he has already secured

the funding. His contentment with his sense of self, paired with his parameters for success,

demonstrate how he has drafted the next few chapters as the author of his own life.

Collaborator 6

Wendell was forced to reckon with an unforeseen crossroads: his early retirement from his

sport. If he were someone who solely derived their self-worth for their athletic identity or

someone for whom the academic component of college is but an afterthought, he may have really

struggled with the transition out of his student-athlete identity. However, Wendell presents

himself at the crux of being incredibly open-minded and unfailingly focused. He knew exactly

what major he wanted to study, and he was only going to commit to an institution that offered his

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major. He knows exactly what job title he wants to hold and even what companies he would like

to work for, but he is not limiting his future school, work, and travel plans to the dichotomy of the

United States and his home country. Instead, he plans to chase opportunity, no matter where in the

world it takes him. Having a complex sense of purpose as an international student-athlete inflated

his yearning for new environments, new peers, and new challenges. His comfortability with his

home culture and host culture, culminating in the cultural interdependence he exudes, testifies to

the need for U.S. higher education institutions to prepare its graduates for success in the

globalized world. American students and international students alike are deserving of pathways to

unfounded success across the globe.

Alignment with Theoretical Frameworks Agency

As presented in Figure 2. Relationship between theories of self-authorship, student agency

& student voice, agency and voice are drivers of the crossroads undergone in the second phase of

self-authorship. All three theoretical frameworks (agency, authorship, voice) are influential in the

development of self. Student agency refers to the quality of students’ actions and interactions

(Biesta, 2008). Engaging in this research project was a way to exercise agency by choosing to

self-reflect on the facets of their functioning (Bandura, 2008; Klemencic, 2015).

Over the course of their international student-athlete experiences, collaborators’ transition from

powerful external influence to powerful internal influence has been due, in part, to the agentic

drivers of power and will (Bandura, 2008; Klemencic, 2015).

Student agency is most evidently interwoven in collaborators’ data about their

relationships, which comprises an overwhelming quantity of the data. In Chapter IV, the purpose

of noting when collaborators uploaded pictures of themselves versus pictures of their social

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groups versus photos that they did not even appear in was to allude to the collaborators’ actions

and interactions. In their photo elicitation interviews, some of the collaborators made clear how

far they had cast their social nets. Namely, Ava was diligent about representing social groups that

were not just limited to her international student-athlete identity. Wendell followed suit, using his

media choices to highlight professional contacts and students from other U.S.

institutions with whom he had interned. Rhatha looked for Thai golfers at every competition she

went to, hoping to experience some of her home culture in her host country.

Other collaborators chose to represent a more narrowed view into their identity-shaping

experiences. Amani uploaded many action photos and videos in which he was the sole subject or

the focus. Besides his two graduation photos, he did not represent his academic journey. Luka and

Karalana engaged with the research project very similarly. Their photos were all athleticrelated,

although they did represent their participation in student-athlete and international student-athlete

clubs, as well as the expected action photos and videos.

It is imperative to note that there was not a “correct” way to engage with this project. As I

told collaborators during the recruitment process, I seek to be conduit for their stories pertaining

to the international student-athlete experience at U.S. higher education institutions. The reality of

the international student-athlete life cycle is that it eventually ends, and everyone involved

follows their own path forward. For many international students, that includes returning to their

home countries and, in some cases, “starting over.” It is not surprising that some collaborators

shed greater light on their friendships as they prepare to say their goodbyes, and other

collaborators primarily presented themselves and their own development, visually paying tribute

to their individualistic experiences. However, the goal of this research was to answer questions

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about the relationships between international student-athletes’ experiences at U.S. higher

education institutions as their identity shaping, their preparation for postgraduate success, and

their personal changes through their college careers.

Results of Research Questions

The first research question, “How do international student-athletes’ experiences at U.S.

higher education institutions shape their identities?,” opens the conversation to the ways

international student-athletes’ titular identities affect their sense of self, as their sense of self is

central to their building of internal foundations. This question was written to allude to the

intrapersonal dimension of the self-authorship framework, asking how external factors facilitated

the shaping of collaborators’ identities. I had questioned whether one of those identities was more

dominant in defining the international student-athlete experience, to which collaborators’ data did

not reveal a clear answer. Whereas student-athlete identity affiliation is generally highest at the

start of a student’s college career, this group of collaborators were faced with the COVID-induced

cancellations, modifications, and restrictions to their student-athlete obligations, likely affecting

the strength of their affiliation with this identity (Quinaud et al., 2023, p. 885). Conversely, the

visa challenges posed by the COVID-induced embassy wait times and everchanging immigration

policies likely affected collaborators’ affiliation with their international student identity. From the

perspectives of both identities, the COVID-19 pandemic was unquestionably impactful on the

shaping of collaborators’ identities.

Beyond the pandemic, there were not many identity-shaping experiences that were shared

by the collaborators. Rhatha and Wendell are actively reckoning with the loss of their

studentathlete identity, but Rhatha chose to move past her student-athlete days and Wendell was

forced to close that chapter of his life. Amani and Luka are leaving college with dreams of

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becoming professional athletes, but Luka has a backup plan if things do not workout. Amani is so

narrowly focused on the short-term goal of making his country’s Olympic team that his future

beyond that point is hazy and undefined. Ava and Karalana know they have options, and they are

keeping their options open as long as possible. While they do not know exactly what they want to

do next, they know, logistically and legally, what their options are.

Despite attending the same institution over the same four-to-five-year period, these

collaborators are more different than they are alike. They can be categorized as international

student-athletes because of their visa status and sport participation, but they had vastly different

experiences that shaped their identities in vastly different ways. I posit that this principle will

hold true in future iterations of this research, as well. If so, we will never be able to generalize the

international student-athlete experience, but that was never the goal of this project. What is

important is the knowledge that their experiences were impactful in helping them understand who

they are beyond the “international student-athlete” label.

The second research question, “How do international student-athletes at U.S. higher

education institutions perceive their preparation for postgraduate success?,” is an opportunity for

collaborators to vocalize their perceptions of their readiness for the next phase of their lives. The

secondary purpose of this question was to evoke conversation about collaborators’ next steps.

While, generally, I was surprised by how few of the experiences shared by international

studentathletes were negative, collaborators were able to matter-of-factly convey the roadblocks

they ran into as both student-athletes and international students. Ava talked about the relative ease

of the U.S. higher education system, questioning whether she would have received a more

challenging college experience in her home country. While some collaborators managed to

partake in internships, multiple collaborators talked about their inability to gain pre-graduation

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work experience, citing limited work opportunities and limited time as primary barriers. This, in

turn, made it even more difficult for those collaborators to use their postgraduate work

authorization to gain experience in their fields of study. At the time of data collection, none of the

collaborators who were pursuing postgraduate work authorization (Ava, Amani, Karalana) had

secured jobs.

A systemic challenge at the federal policy level is the restriction of F-1 visa holders to

only work in their field of study and to only work for one year. Employers do not want to hire

someone for one year, especially if that employer has a strict policy against sponsoring work

visas. While that restriction is outside a U.S. higher education institution’s control, it is a known

reality – at minimum, this project, seeks to make this challenge a more widely known reality.

U.S. higher education institutions cannot deny the ways their students’ futures are dictated by

federal immigration policy. To do right by those students, institutions must be receptive to

meeting international students’ needs for flexible work experience and assistance finding jobs that

receive them well.

Wendell’s questioning of what I personally, as a practitioner, can do to improve

postgraduate job outlooks for international student-athletes is one of the things that I will carry

forward from this research project. He acknowledged that federal immigration regulations are not

changing anytime soon, nor would they change in a way that broadens work opportunities for

non-immigrant student visa holders. He just wanted someone who was aware of the regulations to

help him and his fellow international student-athletes find ways to maximize their experiences

within the confines of the regulations. In doing so, Wendell validated the need for this research.

He pinpointed a downfall of U.S. higher education’s service of international student-athletes, and

he humbly prompted practitioners to do better in the future.

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The third research question, “How do international student-athletes evaluate their personal

changes throughout their college careers?,” sets aside the labels of collaborators’ identities and

instead focuses on the internal transformation that they will carry forward into the next phase of

their lives. The question asks how collaborators have changed because of their actions, decisions,

relationships, failures, and experiences. Despite the level of familial influence on their college

decisions, each collaborator chose to be an international student-athlete at a U.S. higher education

institution. When collaborators were asked what they would change if they could do it all over

again, they reported minimal changes, if any at all. A couple would choose different first-year

roommates, and another would take better advantage of his resources, but no one said they would

have returned home, they would have quit their sport, or they would have transferred to a

different institution. In the absence of those sentiments, the collaborators conveyed that they

would not give up the experiences that made them international studentathletes. Not one

collaborator was so outwardly or inwardly dissatisfied with their institution or themselves that

they would make drastic changes to their college experience. Instead, the collaborators expressed

gratitude for the experiences that molded them, showed them what they were capable of, and

assured them of their personal growth. “Growth” was evidenced by the collaborators’ diction, as

the interview question – like the research question – asked them about their personal changes, to

which all collaborators gave a statement about their growth. Reading and seeing their testimonies,

one can see how each collaborator grew in ways unique to the people they were when they started

college.

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Self-Authorship

With the overarching answers to the research questions, the findings of this project can be

refined by aligning the resultant themes with the framework of self-authorship. Baxter

Magolda’s theory of self-authorship evaluates a person’s ability to author their decisions,

independent of the influences from others. The collaborators in this project exemplified why

selfauthorship development aligns with the college student experience. At the beginning of their

college years, collaborators were not necessarily rooted in the external formulas phase of the self-

authorship continuum, nor were they expected to. The collaborators all spoke about how much

international travel they had done from an early age, primarily due to their sport participation.

They were developing their cultural orientation by trying new experiences and daring to step

outside their comfort zones. From an ethnic identity standpoint, they may have had geographic

definitions of their identity. Collaborators who competed on their country’s national teams may

have had particularly strong geographic identity affiliations. Even as they completed high school

and decided to pursue higher education in the United States, some may have regarded family and

peers as the ultimate authority. The external formulas phase of the continuum was not closely

assessed through this research project because the project primarily focused on international

student-athletes’ identity-shaping experiences during their college years. Because the change in

environment (attending a U.S. higher education institution) exemplifies crossroads, we knew that,

at minimum, collaborators would have toggled with the second phase of self-authorship.

The change in environment collaborators faced when starting their college careers

challenged them to incorporate new diversity into their lives, particularly as they familiarized

themselves with their peers and made friends. Their newfound cultural distance also created

space in which they could manage their family influence. Rhatha, for example, held tight to her

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family and their values, such as their fears of the still-developing effects of COVID. She spoke

about choosing to live more fully despite the pandemic for fear of wasting her college years and

failing to develop relationships. As the quality of her relationships and interactions strengthened,

she found herself calling her dad less. They still talk weekly, but she no longer sees him as her

lifeline.

Both Rhatha and Karalana mentioned first-year roommate conflicts, but neither

collaborator chose to speak much about it. Roommate conflicts are one of the specific building

blocks of self-authorship as mentioned by Baxter Magolda (2012, p. 1). Both collaborators

mentioned their roommate conflicts when asked what, if anything, they would change about their

international student-athlete experiences. While they see the conflicts as dark spots on otherwise

positive journeys, the conflicts were opportunities for them negotiate conflict with others, finding

ways to navigate the crossroads while actively choosing who they did and did not want to pursue

relationships with. As explicated by Torre and Hernandez, re-negotiating relationships that are

consistent with one’s identity perspective is indicative of the third phase of self-authorship.

The argument could be made that collaborators authored their own lives even before arriving in

the United States, as they each had to choose their institution, go through the visa process, make

travel arrangements, and physically get on an airplane to start their journeys. Even if their college

decisions were externally influenced by family or the pandemic, at each step of the pre-arrival

process, they chose to keep going. Perhaps international students, even more than American

students, are already authoring their lives when they choose to pursue higher education in the

United States, thus exemplifying the third phase of the self-authorship continuum. Baxter

Magolda (2001, 2004) suggested that one explanation for students failing to progress through all

four phases of self-authorship was the increasingly prescriptive state of higher education. By

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using too many directives and safeguards, higher education institutions do not give students

enough opportunity to experience and learn from failure. This concept showed up in Rhatha’s

interview when she talked how she suspects it is harder to be an international student than an

international student-athlete because of how many resources she has access to as an international

student-athlete. A few of the collaborators were acutely self-aware of how their athletic support

systems were a form of privilege. It is reasonable to wonder whether the safeguards embedded in

that privilege stifled collaborators’ self-identification and internal foundation-building.

Still, movement along the continuum is fluid, and collaborators can exist in multiple

phases at the same time. As I suspected, though, the data was littered with evidence that

collaborators are actively authoring their own lives and relying on their internal foundations.

Even those who do not know exactly what comes next for them know their power and the vast

possibility ahead of them. They know that they have international options, pertaining to and

separate from their athletic identities. They are adopting southern hospitality and Americanized

food and past times, all while continuing to share their cultures and their languages with those

willing to ask. They are forging cultural exchanges in a way that makes me wonder if they

already are societal leaders.

It was not a goal of this research project to grade students on their progress through the

self-authorship continuum, as my perception of their development is antithetical to the

voiceamplifying nature of this project. Similarly, it is not an explicit goal of U.S. higher

education institutions to move students through the self-authorship continuum. Baxter Magolda

charged institutions with a responsibility to prepare students to become societal leaders, and this

project sought to understand how prepared international student-athletes feel to succeed at

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whatever comes next for them, based on the ways they have changed and the ways their

institutions have supported them.

Matrix of Holistic Development

To align the themes identified in Phases I and II with the theoretical framework of

selfauthorship, I imported my data sources to Nvivo and sorted the salient data chronologically. I

then created classifications of nodes: cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal. These aligned

with Hernández’s (2016) culturally attuned revision of Baxter Magolda’s (2001) three central

questions. The three questions comprise the three rows of the Matrix of Holistic Development,

and sorting the data according to these nodes helped dictate which row encapsulated each piece

of data.

The columns of the Matrix of Holistic Development represent the four phases of

selfauthorship. Because I had sorted the data chronologically, I was able to start with

collaborators’ earliest experiences, plugging that data into the corresponding phase of the self-

authorship continuum. The journey toward self-authorship is not linear, so the exact

chronological was not necessarily indicative of each piece of data’s position on the matrix. Still,

the purpose of analyzing the data according to this matrix was to create a visual representation of

how international student-athletes’ experiences evidenced their journeys toward self-authorship,

connecting the collaborators’ data to the project’s primary theoretical framework.

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Table 3

Matrix of Holistic Development using Collaborators’ Identity-Shaping Experiences

Table 3 (Continued)

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Table 3 (Continued)

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Voice

According to Robinson and Taylor, the use of one’s voice is subscripted within thoughts

that are vocalized and withheld, as well as action and inaction (2007, p. 6). The action of

partaking in this research project was the use of one’s voice. The inaction of avoiding those

relationships and interactions that did not serve their internal foundations was the use of one’s

voice. Voice is used to create cognitive dissonance, and these collaborators specifically

exemplified identity dissonance by differentiating their perceptions of their identities with others’

perceptions of their identities (Pizzolato et al., 2012; Treacy & Leavy, 2021). The monolingual

assumption of voice is but an illusion for these collaborators, who code-switch their language,

their diction, their personas, and their identities depending on their social group (Robinson &

Taylor, 2007, p. 6). They used their voices to share their worldviews and perspectives on the

international student-athlete experience.

A literal exemplification of voice shared by three collaborators was their involvement in

public speaking events, from awards ceremony presentations to alumni event panels to

teambuilding workshops. Luka described the opportunity to present an award onstage as the kind

of experience he would have never had if not for his student-athlete experience. Karalana talked

about the alumni event in the context of her leadership development, as she was chosen to speak

to alumni on behalf of her team. For Rhatha, having to design and present teambuilding

workshops as part of her internship helped her overcome her fear of public speaking in a smaller,

more familiar space. None of these opportunities were designed specifically to give students

opportunities to exercise their voice, yet the events played such a significant role in collaborators’

international student-athlete experiences that they highlighted the opportunities through their

media elicitations.

To conclude the photo elicitation interviews, collaborators were broadly asked if there was

anything else they wanted to share pertaining to the international student-athlete. Almost every

collaborator wanted to use their voice to offer advice to incoming international studentathletes.

The collaborators did not share any cheat codes; instead, they encouraged prospective

international student-athletes to be brave, to soak it all in, to ask for help when needed, and to

take full advantage of the resources they have. None of the advice was earth-shattering, but in an

interview where they could have said anything, they chose to inspire, to guide, to help. Across

geographic borders and across athletic teams, the strength and solidarity of the international

student-athlete community is hard to negate, especially knowing the richness of these six

collaborators’ experiences.

CHAPTER V

DISCUSSION

Overview of Chapter

The purpose of this project was to explore international student-athletes’ understandings

of their personal identity development in the context of their experiences as international

studentathletes at U.S. higher education institutions. Representing a growing demographic in U.S.

higher education, the collaborators on this research project were neither international students nor

student-athletes. They persevere at the intersection of these identity groups, despite the paucity of

student development discourse on their unique subpopulation. This research was designed to

elicit results that would add to the literature on minoritized individuals’ pathways through

Hernández’s (2016) culturally attuned revisions of Baxter Magolda’s (2001) theory of self-

authorship. This was achieved through photo elicitation interviews with six international student-

athletes, during which they visually presented glimpses into their college careers while explaining

why those media files were salient and meaningful to them, particularly in relation to their

impending graduation and postgraduate plans.

The project was guided by the following research questions:

1. How do international student-athletes’ experiences at U.S. higher education

institutions shape their identities?

2. How do international student-athletes at U.S. higher education institutions

perceive their preparation for postgraduate success?

3. How do international student-athletes evaluate their personal changes throughout

their college careers?

This chapter is comprised of seven sections. The first section summarizes the findings,

comparing similarities and differences in themes and addressing the answers to the research

question. The second section states the limitations and challenges of the research design. The

third section offers suggestions for practitioners. The fourth section contains recommendations

for future research.

Summary of Findings

Through this research project, collaborators gave practitioners invaluable insight into their

lived experiences as international student-athletes on the campuses of U.S. higher education

institutions. They taught us that every international student-athlete engages with infinitely

different sets of identity-shaping experiences, reinforcing the need to avoid generalizations about

international student-athletes, particularly pertaining to development theories and frameworks.

Even from a student recruitment perspective, there is no singular “international student-athlete

experience” that can be sold to prospective students, as world events and life events will affect

each student’s ways of knowing, sense of self, and desire for relationships differently.

Collaborators were vocal in their hopes for practitioners to do more and to do better in

helping international students navigate the work authorization restrictions of their non-immigrant

visas. It is unfair that institutions leave international students to their own devices as they grapple

with one of the strictest aspects of their student experiences. While the circumstances (the federal

regulations) are unlikely to change, institutions have the people power to ensure that international

students do not have to navigate the circumstances alone.

Unsurprisingly, each collaborator presented evidence of their rapid and continuous

growth. They may not have seen the changes they were undergoing at the time, but with a

retrospective view of their college experiences, they were able to pinpoint exactly how they

changed as a result. Athletics support services in particular sometimes teeter on enabling

studentathletes by providing them too many safeguards, but the collaborators in this project

demonstrated the value of being able to carve their own paths through higher education. They

wanted to make the wrong decisions, try new things, and see what they could do for themselves.

This does not stray far from the American college student experience, either. Perhaps a subliminal

message from collaborators is that for as unique and rightfully deserving of specialized attention

as they are, they are still college students at the end of the day. When their international student-

athlete identities are overlooked, they are young people navigating early adulthood and testing

potential trajectories for the rest of their lives.

Limitations and Challenges

Recruiting collaborators was one of the biggest challenges of this research project. I had

reached out to the sports information directors (SIDs), heads of athletics academics, and

studentathlete development professionals at 14 institutions, asking them to connect me with their

international student-athletes who met the inclusion criteria. I only received responses from three

of those institutions: two emails saying I had to go through those institutions’ internal review

board processes and one email agreeing to help with the project. Thus, all my collaborators are

from one institution, which is a significant limitation of this research project. Other flaws with

this method of contacting prospective collaborators were the inherit power dynamic of receiving

the call for collaborators from a staff member at their institution rather than the researcher herself

and the timing of the data collection. Attempting to engage graduating seniors in data collection,

while many of them are participating in their sports’ postseasons, certainly affected my pool of

prospective collaborators. In a future iteration of this project, it would be best to collect data

when collaborators are out of season or between academic terms.

I originally planned to include eight collaborators from as many different universities as I

could. Because recruitment was such a struggle, I involved only six collaborators, all from the

same university. While this is inevitably a clear limitation of my research, I cannot discount the

rich data and the incredibly thoughtful contributions of those six collaborators to this research

project. One of the risks of photo elicitation research method is the degree to which collaborators

will engage with it, and I am lucky to have had six collaborators who cared deeply about

contributing to the literature on their student demographic (Wong, 2023).

A challenge of only collaborating with student-athletes was my inability to incentivize

participation in this project. I could not offer them any kind of remuneration because it would

have violated NCAA rules. In future research, I would design the whole project more

collaboratively. I would give collaborators the option to co-author the publication and to

copresent the findings at professional development conferences. Ideally, I would secure grant

funding to pay collaborators as research assistants (a form of on-campus employment that fits

within the NCAA rules and the non-immigrant visa regulations for work authorization), and I

would draw out the data collection process over the course of a year or even multiple years. I am

hopeful that would solve the incentivization issue and the timing of data collection issue, along

with giving collaborators useful experiences for their resumes and graduate school applications.

Recommendations for Practitioners

This project was designed with my work experience in student-athlete development and

international services in mind. These collaborators have demonstrated the need for athletics staff

and international services staff to work together, particularly to create pre-graduation work

experience opportunities that fit within the bounds of their non-immigrant visa regulations and

the schedules of their athletic and academic commitments. International services staff have

extensive knowledge about the ways work can be authorized, and athletics staff have the

influence to fit experiential learning into international student-athletes’ schedules. International

services staff are also attuned to the challenges faces by international students, including financial

difficulty (precluding international students from accepting unpaid internships) and transportation

limitations (limiting international students to internships and co-ops that need not be reached by

car). Institutions – particularly athletics departments and alumni organizations – have such

extensive people power that could be tapped into to connect international studentathletes with

accessible, remunerated, legal work experiences. As Amani pointed out, an international student-

athlete’s support services can be overwhelming to the extent that utility is lost. Practitioners

should also be cognizant of the ways providing too many answers or crutches can hinder

international student-athletes’ self-authorship journeys.

One of the authorship-building elements of the international student experience is that

international students are solely responsible for their legal status. International services offices

exist to educate students about their obligations and oversee their compliance, but international

students must ensure they update their physical address every time they move, they stay enrolled

in enough credit hours, and they attain the proper work authorization before engaging in any

work. The recommendation for collaboration across functional areas is not to take this

responsibility from students. Rather, it is to acknowledge the constraints international

studentathletes are working with and making a conscious effort to account for those constraints.

To walk that line, practitioners can start by tailoring existing programming to account for

international student-athletes’ work authorization restrictions. For example, a resume workshop

should not only present the standards of an American resume, which does not benefit students

pursuing careers in their home countries. An internship program that is related to students’ athlete

identity (i.e., athletics marketing, institutional advancement/fundraising, gameday operations) but

not related to their academic major is not allowable on the F-1 visa, so a wider range of internship

opportunities should be included. When organizing career fairs specifically for student-athletes,

athletic departments should intentionally seek out employers who are open to work sponsorship.

Otherwise, there is little reason for international student-athletes to expend their energy

networking with people who cannot help them overcome their visa limitations.

To guide their efforts, athletics staff and international services staff should make a

concerted effort to understand what international student-athletes are planning to do following

graduation. If this question is posed early in the international student-athlete’s college career, then

support staff can better support students in pursuit of their goals. Namely, athletic academic

counselors can help international student-athletes choose their major/degree program more

intentionally, as the non-immigrant visa regulations restrict international students to off-campus

work that is related to their field of study.

Because only one collaborator mentioned serving as a representative on the

StudentAthlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), I did not gather much data about the role of

identity-based clubs and organizations in collaborators’ experiences. Still, practitioners should

continue to give power and influence to international student and student-athlete clubs and

organizations while amplifying the voices of international student-athletes in clubs and

organizations that are not specific to those identity groups. Advocacy is a learned skill that should

be modeled, especially by trusted professionals on college campuses.

The strategic integration of transferable skills into development programming is another

way for practitioners to support all students, no matter what their futures hold. Karalana and

Rhatha talked about becoming more comfortable with public speaking by representing her team

on a panel and presenting an award at the end-of-year ceremony, respectively. Neither of these

events were designed specifically to improve students’ public speaking skills, but both events

served as learning opportunities and confidence-building experiences through which the

collaborators honed skills that they will inevitably need in the future.

Recommendations for Future Research

While this research was not meant to produce generalizable results, the design was created

with the intention that it could be replicated, with international student-athletes in a different

athletic division or a different region of the country.

It is worth revisiting the number of media files that collaborators are asked to upload. In

my first iteration of this work, I had found that 6-8 media files were not enough for the

collaborators to encapsulate years of experiences. Therefore, I increased the number of media

files to 10-15 for this iteration of the project. Only one collaborator uploaded less than 15 files,

and many collaborators reported how difficult it was to summarize their international

studentathlete experiences in just 15 photos and videos. As the researcher, I would have been

overwhelmed with more than six collaborators uploading more than 15 files, so I would not

change the media elicitation guidelines in a future iteration of the research design.

Moving forward, it is worth exploring the “student-athlete” nomenclature and its role in

student identity research (Harry, 2021). The collaborators did not really use that diction; they

either referred to themselves as students or athletes. To that end, I wonder if the phrase

“international student-athlete” unfairly muddled the two separate identities or combined them to

an extent that was neither fair nor accurate. The choice to use the “international student-athlete”

language was derived from the NCAA Think Tank participants’ recommendations for

practitioners, but language should consistently be evaluated, especially as the landscape of

collegiate athletics rapidly evolves.

In my athletics work experiences, I struggled with feeling like we were doing the bare

minimum to keep student-athletes eligible and shuffle them through the system. Especially after

hearing Amani talk about how he wishes he could go back and more fully take advantage of the

resources available to him, it would be fascinating to explore how international student-athletes

use the support systems available to them. In the context of self-authorship, it may have been

better for his personal growth that Amani did not rely heavily on the scaffolding and learning

partnership models with which he was associated. In contrast, maybe if he had leaned into those

resources, he would have further developed his self-efficacy and sense of self, giving him a better

idea of what he is capable of and what he would enjoy doing next.

Having learned that collaborators did not strongly or intentionally plan to return to their

home countries, I would update the interview script to ask more questions about how being an

international student-athlete in the United States affected one’s affiliation with their home culture.

This could be difficult to gauge, considering some international student-athletes rarely, if ever,

travel to their home countries during their college careers. Alternatively, I would construct a new

research design with international student-athletes who are further removed from their college

careers and have returned to their home countries, hoping to gain a more retrospective view of the

ways their time in the United States affected their affiliation with their home country culture.

I was surprised by the lack of negative or harmful experiences reported by international

student-athletes. It is possible that my positionality as an international student advisor at their

institution precluded them from reporting instances of discrimination, neo-racism, xenophobia,

etc. It is also possible that my interview questions did not prompt collaborators to equally

consider the good and the bad formative experiences they have had. This research design would

be especially interesting with collaborators whose home countries do not have positive cultural,

historical, or political relationships with the United States. More strategic questions alluding to

the anti-immigrant basis of neo-racism could reveal a darker side of international studentathletes’

experiences at U.S. higher education institutions, which would contribute to the existing

literature. A third possibility is that the agency-building design of this research project amplified

Yosso’s strengths-based model by foregrounding collaborators’ experiential knowledge, in stark

contrast to the outdated deficit-mindset model of Bordieu and Passeron (1977). Future iterations

of this research project may shed light on why there was a lack of negative experiences reported

by collaborators.

Conclusion

This dissertation is meant to contribute to the existing literature on international

studentathletes’ perceptions of their identity-shaping experiences and personal growth, as

catalyzed by their experiences at U.S. higher education institutions. This project upheld the value

of international student-athletes’ lived experiences by centering collaborators’ visual and audio

data as primary sources for understanding how well their institutions served them. The data was

collected during the last week of classes for six graduating collaborators, all of whom are now

actively navigating the next phase of their lives. This research, which was not possible without

the time, perspective, and emotional labor of its collaborators, provides indispensable

recommendations for practitioners, especially in college athletics and international services.

Practitioners simply cannot prepare international student-athletes for their post-graduate lives in

the same ways that they prepare American students for theirs. Collaborators specifically

expressed their needs for bolstered support in their career preparation runways. If such support

were ingrained in the international student-athlete experience, students may be able to live more

fully in their college experiences while knowing that they can achieve their postgraduate

definitions of success.

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT-ATHLETES' AGENCY, AUTHORSHIP, AND VOICE AT U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

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