Jordyn Faucette organizes her life around her opportunities, and saying yes to them is among the many reasons the rising University of Georgia senior was one of 19 students across the nation to be awarded the Beinecke Scholarship this spring.
“I’m so excited about everything I’m doing,” Faucette said, “and I’ve been very lucky to have a lot of my education rooted in the work and research that I’m doing.”
Faucette loves to say yes, and her yeses are plentiful: three majors, working with the Bigger Vision of Athens homeless shelter, teaching for Upward Bound, tutoring for the UGA Writing Center, researching authoritarian regimes and pedagogy, a fellowship with AmeriCorps and a future studying political theory.
A first-generation college student and a McNair Scholar, Faucette is majoring in philosophy and English in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and political science in the School of Public and International Affairs. She is also working toward master’s degrees in philosophy and political science through UGA’s Double Dawgs program.
In short, she said, “I study political theory.”
Faucette is UGA’s third Beinecke Scholar, and the first since 2019.
The Beinecke Scholarship funds graduate students of exceptional promise in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Beinecke Scholars receive $5,000 prior to entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while attending graduate school. UGA is able to nominate one student for the award each year.
“Jordyn is one of the finest and most deserving students I have encountered,” said Meg Amstutz, dean of the Morehead Honors College, which houses UGA’s major scholarships office. “Her intellect and wit are accompanied by a tremendous work ethic, and she has a clear vision of herself as a scholar, engaging with colleagues in discussions of modern political theory.”
Faucette grew up in the tiny rural town of Reynolds, population 926, located between Macon and Columbus in middle Georgia. Her grandmother raised her to “always help anybody, anywhere you can,” she said, and she has taken that same attitude with her to Athens.
“It’s nice to immerse myself in Athens, in the small town of it all,” Faucette said. “It feels like I’m helping my own community, like I’m back home.”
Within Athens-Clarke County, Faucette is very active. She addresses food insecurity as an AmeriCorps Community Food Fellow and works with housing insecure individuals at the Bigger Vision of Athens homeless shelter. Her Bigger Vision work is supported by an internship program in the School of Public and International Affairs. She provides writing consulting and tutoring at the UGA Writing Center, teaches English language arts to first-generation and low-income high school students through the U.S. Department of Education’s Upward Bound program, and will begin a first-year writing pedagogy internship at UGA this fall. Faucette is also working outside of Athens through the Carl Vinson Institute of Government’s PROPEL Rural Scholars program, which helps rural Georgia communities develop economic stability.
She is president of the Athens Fiber Arts Society (she loves to sew, crochet and knit); co-content editor for the Chapel Bell; and a member of Eta Sigma Phi. She studied abroad at the University of Oxford in 2023.
This August, Faucette will present her research on the justification and legitimacy of authoritarian regimes at the 2024 Annual McNair Convention. She conducted the study under the direction of Jeremy Cynamon, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, and her paper focuses on an argument for welfare-based political legitimacy. She is also pursuing a project on the acceptance of novel pedagogical power structures with associate professor Rebecca Martini, a study that questions the effect of a student’s community on their educational experience.
Her research and her service fuel her passion for political theory.
“As political theorists, we often forget that people are not theoretical, suffering is not theoretical, devastation is not theoretical,” she said. “I want to change that. I want to give our practice a praxis of humanity.”
She looks forward to starting a doctorate in political science and spending the next five to seven years studying and teaching “something I am deeply passionate about and really love.” During her doctorate program, she wants to keep asking questions about welfare legitimacy, constitutionalism, utopias and liberalism.
“It’s an academic interest, of course,” she explained, “but it’s more than that. Throughout history, all improvement has begun in the belly of philosophy, and political rights and liberties are no different. I want to play a role in that.”
She is excited for the challenge it all brings and is looking forward to continuing to say yes.
“I am well acquainted with struggle, with hard work and with difficult things,” she said. “I know that I haven’t chosen an easy field or an easy passion, but I’m ready to give it everything I have, for there is no greater gift than to live your life doing what you love.”
The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the board of directors of the Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick and Walter Beinecke. Since 1975, the program has selected 739 college juniors from 122 undergraduate institutions for support during graduate study at any accredited university. For more information, visit https://beineckescholarship.org/.
UGA’s major scholarships office, housed in the Morehead Honors College, works closely with all students across campus as they apply for national, high-level scholarships. For more information, contact Jessica Hunt at jhunt@uga.edu.