When Frederick Starck first moved to Florence, he thought he’d stay for three months. Now, he’s been here for over two years, set to graduate in May with a hospitality degree from The American University of Florence (AUF).

While the unplanned extended stay might have been nerve-racking to some, Starck said his decision was easy.

“I wouldn’t say I was very anxious,” Starck said. “I’m used to moving, and I don’t really view moving as cutting off friendships with anybody. It’s what I wanted to pursue. I was ready to branch out and experience more of the world.”

So Starck, who started his study abroad in Florence at another school, enrolled in AUF as a full-time student in the spring of 2024.

“I had a really fun time, but at the end of the semester, all the friends that I had left,” Starck said. “But then I came here, and I met the whole community of long-term students, and I actually had a group in Florence. That’s kind of when Florence started to feel like more of a home than just a place I was visiting.”

Still, Starck felt like something was missing from the university: a place for long-term students and temporary ones alike to connect. He started brainstorming ideas for a club, which the school had never had before.

Inspired by Starck’s “Scenic Chess Club” back home at the University of Hawaii, FUA’s official chess club was born in September 2025.

The chess club, AUF’s first and only student club, welcomes all students of all skill levels every Wednesday at 7:30 pm in AUF’s Palazzi Community Center courtyard.

“It’s nice to have clubs to have an opportunity to chat and get along with somebody outside of the structure of a class,” Starck said. “So yeah, I think the importance of clubs for that kind of fostering your community is quite important.”

Starck said he hopes students join the club to meet new people, regardless of whether they have prior interest in chess. He described it as more of a “social function” than a formal environment.

“People don’t want to go because they’re like, ‘I don’t know how to play chess,’” Starck said. “And, genuinely, probably half of the people in the chess club also don’t know how to play, or are very, very beginner.”

Starck said chess has been a lifelong interest of his. He grew up playing with his father, whom he can now beat “easily” thanks to all the practice chess club has given him.

“I thought he was really, really good, but he’s not that good,” Starck said with a laugh.

Now, he gets to teach new players the abstract board game.

“It’s not about competition. It’s more about just learning and sharing that knowledge of wanting to learn,” Starck said. “So the main function of the chess club is to teach people how to play and to get people inspired.”

As a senior at AUF, Starck has used chess club to teach younger students more than just chess moves. He said he often finds himself welcoming new study abroad students into this unfamiliar environment, giving them the advice he wishes he’d gotten over two years ago.

“Don’t be afraid to get lost. That’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had — just wandering,” Starck said. “I like to go to a place and have no plans and just meet a random troop of people. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I planned dinner at the perfect beach or whatever.”

Starck said he’s approaching post-graduate life with this same energy — not with tedious planning, but with trust that he will end up where he is meant to be, letting his curiosity lead him. He’s looking for jobs in the hotel industry in hopes of maintaining the travel-filled lifestyle studying abroad gave him, which he said changed his life for the better.

“It challenged the beliefs that I had already from growing up, surrounded by an American bubble with all similar values. You can come to see the world in that sense, like it’s the truth in your eyes,” Starck said. “And then when you leave that, and you meet different people that have very different world views… that made me reevaluate how I see the world and the way that I want to live.”

This principle is what shaped the chess club from the beginning as a space where all students from different backgrounds could show up and spend time together without pressure or expectations.

While chess is at the center, Starck said the real point was always the same as his own experience in Florence — creating a place where people don’t feel like they’re just passing through.

Don’t worry, though, the chess club is in good hands wherever Starck ends up. His best friend and club vice president, Zach Marshall, is taking over, and Starck said he’ll visit as often as possible.

For Starck, Florence started as a temporary stop. But between the people he met, the lessons he learned, and the club he created, it became something much harder to leave, something that will keep going even after he does.