By Byron E. Jones
Azia Romanpicon, a Navy veteran and junior psychology major at the University of North Florida, is grateful for the opportunity to earn a college degree while also helping fellow military veterans, just like her, adjust to civilian life and pursue their academic interests.
Slated to graduate in fall 2025, Romanpicon says she enjoys everything the UNF campus has to offer.

“UNF is a beautiful campus,” she said. “The classes and the instructors are great.”
From her own experience, Romanpicon found that transitioning from military life to civilian life was overwhelming at first. She says discovering the available veteran resources UNF offers was beneficial to her adjustment process.
In her dual roles as a Veterans Affairs Work Study student assistant in the UNF Military and Veterans Resource Center (MVRC) and president of the Student Veterans of America UNF Chapter, Romanpicon says she and her colleagues are always willing to offer assistance to other veterans.
“We enjoy helping people find their way, just as we had to find our way,” she said.
Recently, Romanpicon was recognized as a Military Friendly® 2024 Student Veteran Leadership Award honoree and is featured in the fall edition of G.I. Jobs Magazine discussing her experience transitioning to civilian life.
Early life and military service
A native of Duncan, Oklahoma, Romanpicon says much of her upbringing revolved around farm work and spending time with friends. After graduating high school, she enrolled in college, but did not complete her studies — admitting that she was not ready for college at that time in her life.
At the suggestion of her uncle, she considered pursuing a career in the military and joined the Navy in 2013. Romanpicon says she finds it ironic that she joined the military considering she didn’t like taking orders from others.
“I never liked authority, so I never thought I would be the person to join the miliary,” said Romanpicon.
She says being in the military did wonders for her confidence and empowered her to recognize that women can succeed in a male-dominated career field.
“I grew my confidence in the military,” said Romanpicon. “The more responsibility I got, the more successful and the more confident I became.”
In addition to finding confidence, she also found love. Her husband is a current active-duty Navy serviceman. During her four-year military career, she served as an aviation electrician's mate fixing wiring and parts in military aircrafts. Before leaving the Navy, she worked her way up to the rank of E-4 Navy petty officer third class.
Move to Jacksonville and enrolling at UNF
Following her military career, she and her husband moved to California for three years before moving to Jacksonville in 2020 for his current assignment at NAS Jax.
Desiring a return to college, she researched opportunities and found that UNF offered an abundance of programs she was interested in and enrolled in fall 2021 with the goal of studying psychology to become a counselor. While she says being a nontraditional college-aged student was daunting at first, the MVRC offered her the opportunity to connect with others with similar experiences.
“I love working at the MVRC and being around like-minded people,” Romanpicon said.
While studying psychology, she enrolled in a substance abuse course that shifted her professional goals. She says the course opened her eyes to the importance of second chances, and she is now eyeing a career as a probations officer.
When she’s not taking classes or working in the MVRC, she enjoys CrossFit training and spending time with her husband and their four dogs.