Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/ College/ Unit Psychology Department

Title Graduate Student

Graduate Major Developmental Psychology

Affiliation Graduate

Primary Office Location Social Sciences 2
206

Mail Stop Psychology Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

Felicity is a fourth-year developmental psychology doctoral-track graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a proud Chicana, first-generation college student from Southern California.

Felicity began her undergraduate career at Moorpark College, a California Community College, and transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). At UCLA, Felicity majored in psychology and minored in international migration studies. Felicity's capstone project examined ecological, behavioral, and relationship shifts during COVID-19 using big data collected from Mexican media. 

After her undergraduate career, Felicity received a master's in Psychological Science from California State University, Northridge. During the program, Felicity assisted with a longitudinal research project on underrepresented students' cultural, health, and developmental changes during the transition to college. Her master's thesis investigated the 'pros and cons' of the home environment (e.g., cultural wealth and home-school value mismatch) in underrepresented college students' campus engagement. 

In the Identity Development and Education in Adolescence and Adulthood (IDEAA) lab at UC Santa Cruz, Felicity's research interests center on Latine/x/a/o college students' ethnic and racial identity development across socialization contexts (e.g., family, higher education, social media). Her recent work investigates the intersectional ethnic-racial identity labeling of Latine college students. Her future work will examine the bidirectional ethnic-racial socialization between Latine emerging adults and their parents via social network system (SNS) sharing.  

Awards, Honors and Grants

• Crossing Latinidades Research Fellow ( 2026-27)
• Huerta Center Graduate Research Grant (FA 2025) 
• Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship (2023-28)

Selected Publications

Watson, C., Gutierrez, F. B., & Azmitia, M. (2026). Honoring Complexity: A Guide to Thematic Analysis in Identity Research [Special Section]. The Journal of the International Society for Research in Identity.