GRAD EDGE Fellow Spotlight: Francesca Rodriguez

I graduated from San Diego State University back in 2022 with a major in psychology and minors in Spanish and interdisciplinary studies. It was really during my junior year that I started to get involved with research. I joined the Infant and Child Development lab at SDSU working as a research assistant and doing observational coding for a project studying bilingual language development in Latino youth.

So that was my first sort of formal introduction to research. At the same time, I was working as a respite worker, essentially providing caregiving and supervision for children with developmental disorders. By the time I graduated, I still didn't really have a clear sense of what I wanted to do with that degree, but I knew I had these interests. I knew that I liked research, but was also interested in working with clinical populations. So that motivated me to apply to UCSB Academic Research Consortium program...and luckily I was accepted. So I had the opportunity to come to UCSB the summer after I graduated for a supported summer research experience working with Dr. Maya Barnett in the PADRES lab. It was really that summer research experience that solidified my interest in coming to grad school, and particularly in this field and in clinical psychology, which incorporates both both research and clinical practice. But I knew to come back to grad school -- I needed even more research experience.

That experience encouraged me to go back to SDSU for the experimental psychology master's program. I did that for two years and graduated in 2025.  I then worked for a year as a research coordinator on a clinical trial, testing an intervention for kids with anxiety and depression in community settings. So I did that for a year while at the same time I started applying to graduate programs. Ultimately, I was accepted here at UCSB to work again with Dr. Maya Barnett and the PADRES lab. So it's been a long journey. and very full circle to now be back and working with Dr. Barnett.
 

My earliest memory of what I wanted to do is that I wanted to be a doctor. For most of my childhood, I thought that I wanted to be a medical doctor, but I knew that in some capacity, I wanted to be in a helping profession, to help people.

When I was about 5 or 6, my parents bought me a realistic doctor's kit -- it had a white lab coat and a little nametag that said "Dr. Rodriguez." And that was a really formative experience for me,  even at such a young age, to step into that role. Later in life, I was introduced to psychology as a field or a discipline. It was actually through popular media -- movies and TV -- that I was introduced to psychology.  I know that popular media isn't always the best representation of psychology, but I found it really interesting. One of my favorite movies is The Silence of the Lambs. I was really fascinated by the depiction of psychology in that movie and the role of Clarice, who's an FBI trainee...that was really fascinating to me. That is what is kind of pushed me to study psychology.  After I had already enrolled at SDSU and started taking psychology classes, I felt like I was able to start connecting the dots between some of my own personal experiences with mental health challenges growing up in my household, and a motivation that I had to help people who maybe went through similar experiences.

So that's my journey to psychology.

It was actually my faculty advisor, Dr. Maya Barnett, who introduced me to the program. I had never heard of it and wasn't familiar with it until she mentioned it. This was after I had already been accepted into the doctoral program here. She had reached out to me like a couple weeks or so after and asked if I might be interested in getting engaged early over the summer and starting research through this funded opportunity.

It sounded great. She was the one who nominated me and submitted the application on my behalf. So I'm super grateful for her efforts and for thinking of me.

Honestly, it's been really great. Everyone has been super welcoming and supportive. My experience is a little bit unique in the sense that I am familiar to an extent with UCSB, the community, and also having had the experience working with my faculty advisor at the undergraduate level as a research assistant. I had some experience and knowledge coming in. I knew that I liked UCSB and enjoyed working with Dr. Barnett and her lab.

At the same time, with that said, I do feel like it is a very different experience coming in at the doctoral level. The expectations are different. It's been really helpful to have the support of the GRAD EDGE program...just in terms of navigating that transition, providing access, and highlighting all the different resources available for graduate students that I don't think I would otherwise have known about.

It's also been really helpful to get to know other students who are coming in from similar CSU backgrounds and who have shared experiences. I think having that community coming in just makes it feel a little bit less overwhelming and isolating, It is validating to share experiences with those that you know are coming in with similar academic trajectories.

My research goal is to reduce disparities in mental health services, both in access and outcomes for diverse populations through the uptake or the translation of evidence-based treatments in community settings where these populations are traditionally seen and served, with a specific focus on youth and families -- that's my particular population of interest. One avenue through which I'd like to do this work is studying Latino parent and family engagement in community-based interventions and strategies for strengthening and bolstering engagement in these settings, Unfortunately, we see, for a myriad of reasons, that engagement is low..and we know that engagement is a strong predictor of outcome.

Better support and engagement in these treatments ultimately can help enhance outcomes for kids and their families -- those are my interests. GRAD EDGE has helped support those goals. Over the course of the summer, I've had the opportunity to get involved in research a little sooner than I traditionally would have starting in the fall, which has been really helpful.

I have also been supporting the second-year student in my lab on her project. She's an incoming third-year student now and this is her second-year project studying provider and parent perspectives on the implementation of a parenting intervention in Chile. So I've had the opportunity to come in and support ...essentially the introduction to the background for this project. It has been really helpful to be able to do this over the summer with the support of GRAD EDGE, because although it's really aligned with my interests and my research goals in this area in particular, as international implementation and global mental health is new to me. Through GRAD EDGE, I've had a head start in terms of getting familiar with this area of research. Also, getting familiar with the dynamics of the lab and getting to join lab meetings to see how the lab runs and what people are working on...I think has been super helpful and has made me feel more prepared to officially start in the fall. This area of research has been really exciting and interesting to me.

As far as the direction of the research in the lab, it is really promising and sounds like they'll be doing this work for a while...so we'll all be around for the next few years, So there's a very good chance that this will likely turn into work that I'm doing myself over 5 or 6 years.

It's just been super helpful to have a little bit of a head start before officially starting classes and all of the craziness in the fall. 

I think what comes to mind first---which probably sounds a little bit cliche--but it's definitely just getting engaged in research and working on projects that I really care about with like-minded individuals. I think it's interesting that in the years leading up to this point, I'm really focused on honing my and figuring out what it is that I like and what I want to do. I finally feel like I'm at a place where I feel really settled in my interests, and now I'm eager to start the work and be able to do projects in this area.

I'm also really excited to start clinical work and clinical training. My program is an applied psychology program. Sarting in the second year, we'll start receiving clinical training...then that continues to progress over the course of the program. That is something that I haven't really had the opportunity to do up to this point. So I'm really excited about that new opportunity. It's also really relevant to my research interests and the work that I want to do. I think it will just provide a different perspective into my research -- being able to actually start delivering these interventions that I'm studying and start working with the populations that I'm interested in. I think that will be really beneficial.

I'm also really excited to be living in Santa Barbara. I really love it here. I have family who are local as well -- my sister and her family are here. It will be really good to be in Santa Barbara and be close to family. 

First and foremost, I would want to thank my faculty advisor, Dr.  Maya Barnett. She has played such an integral role in my academic and career journey, starting all the way back to four years ago when I came to her after my undergraduate degree and didn't really know what kind of research I wanted to do or which direction I wanted to go in. So working with her and working in the PADRES lab was kind of the first time that I really saw opportunity. I was working with her current doctoral students at the time, and I was like, "wow, I would really like to be like these students in a couple of years." So definitely a big  "thank you" to Maya and also to the current PADRES lab students and other current students for making me feel so welcome and supported. It's an interesting experience to be joining a new lab when there are already ongoing projects, and people have spent and dedicated a lot of time and effort. To be someone new coming in and getting access to that data and that work...everybody has been so welcoming and collaborative, so it's been really great.

I also would like to thank my master's advisor, Dr. Robin. At San Diego State University, she played a really, really integral role in helping me apply to graduate school by mentoring me through what can be a really difficult and psychologically draining experience. She was super supportive and encouraging. She helped for two years to really figuring out what I wanted to do, and which direction that I wanted to go in with my research. She was really great in identifying strengths in me that I maybe couldn't see at the time...and then fostering me in that direction.

Finally, I would want to thank the GRAD EDGE team for all of your support throughout the summer, in particular Sebastian, the program coordinator. It is so obvious how much he cares about his academic community. I feel really grateful for all the effort he's put into this program and also into my cohort. He's done a really great job. It's clear that he's been so thoughtful about the experiences and the workshops that he's curated. I have to shout out Karen van Gool who I met four years ago in the ARC program, but I feel like she has been cheering me on ever since.

It's been great to be coming back to such a welcoming community here at UCSB.