Dr. Rebecca Covarrubias is an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her interdisciplinary research examines how institutional structures and practices systematically marginalize the complex and dynamic ways of being and knowing of students, their families, staff, and faculty. She explores how groups resist this marginalization to transform institutional spaces and relationships.

Covarrubias grew up in a low-income neighborhood and in a mixed-status Mexican household in Phoenix, Arizona. Raised by loving family and community of mentors from neighborhood parks, libraries, and public schools, Covarrubias is a proud first-generation college graduate from The University of Arizona, where she was also a Ronald E. McNair Achievement Scholar. After earning her doctorate in social psychology from The University of Arizona, she taught psychology courses in Orvieto, Italy through the Arizona in Italy Study Abroad Program. She then became a University Diversity Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow for the Center of the Study of Diversity at the University of Delaware before joining UC Santa Cruz in fall 2015.

At UC Santa Cruz, Covarrubias co-launched the First-Generation Initiative to raise visibility of the first-generation community and led the campus’s Student Success Equity Research Center to produce high-impact, translatable research on educational equity. She currently serves on the HSI Leadership Committee, as Associate Director for Research for the Center for Reimagining Leadership, as Associate Dean for Student Success for the Division of Social Sciences, and as a co-founding member of the first-ever HSI Research Colectiva. In these roles, Covarrubias collaborates with diverse partners (students, staff, faculty, families) to develop actionable practices to shift the culture of institutions and help students thrive.