Students Prepare for Global Careers at Language Career Night
April 15, 2026
Language House alumni return to campus to speak with students about their career paths and how languages have influenced their professional lives.
From left to right: Panelists Jay Crisler (via Zoom), Brook Jefferson, Sarah Gagné, Tula Lock, Sarah Eppley.
How can speaking multiple languages enhance your career prospects? Each spring the Language House organizes Language Career Night to explore this question. This event, organized in partnership with Kate Juhl from the University Career Center at the College of Arts & Humanities, brings alumni from the Language House Living-Learning Program and the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) back to campus for a roundtable panel discussion about how their language skills have impacted and shaped their career trajectories. Language Career Night helps students to “Be Worldwise [and] Get Worldready” by learning about different career paths and ways to leverage their language proficiency on the job market, as well as networking and connecting with alumni.
This year’s event, held on March 30 in the Lauretta Clough Community Room of Jiménez Hall, featured a panel of four alumni and one current UMD student representing a variety of industries across engineering, education, culinary, and policy sectors in the United States and abroad. More than forty students from the Language House and across UMD’s campus attended.
From left to right: Language House Director Dr. Marilyn Matar, and panelists Jay Crisler (via Zoom), Brook Jefferson, Sarah Gagné, Tula Lock, Sarah Eppley.
Speaking via Zoom, Jay Crisler (‘94), Project Manager/Engineer at Zamperla, discussed his path from a dual degree in German and engineering to his career designing roller coasters in Italy. Sarah Eppley (‘18), Dining Services Coordinator at UMD, shared insights into her experiences studying abroad in South Korea and how she uses her skills in multiple languages in her work in the campus dining halls. The panel also featured Brook Jefferson (‘10 and ‘12), World Language and ELO Specialist at Montgomery County Public Schools, who speaks both French and Spanish and once served as Language House interim director, as well as Sarah Gagné (‘22), Coordinator at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, who works with continuing education for speech-hearing professionals. Current UMD senior and former Language House student Tula Lock (‘26, Arabic Studies and History), who has held internships at the Middle East Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations, also joined the panel.
Moderated by Language House Director and Associate Clinical Professor of French, Dr. Marilyn Matar, the discussion touched on the panelists’ current positions as well as their stories of language and culture immersion throughout their time at UMD and in their post-grad lives. They also shared advice about how students can market their language skills and stay immersed in their languages after graduation. In the question-and-answer session that followed, the panelists offered insights into their own experiences as language learners, emphasizing through personal anecdotes the importance of making mistakes and not being afraid to practice speaking skills whenever the opportunity arises.
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