Sebastian Puerta, a University of Georgia junior earning his combined bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics, was one of 20 students nationwide selected this spring as a Beinecke Scholar.
The scholarship awards $34,000 to third-year students with demonstrated financial need who will pursue graduate studies in the arts, humanities or social sciences. Puerta is the second UGA student to receive the honor.
Sebastian Puerta
Puerta, an Honors student and Foundation Fellow, plans to earn a doctorate in economics. His focus will be on education policy with an emphasis on gifted instruction and peer effects as sources to identify and improve outcomes for disadvantaged students. A first-generation college student, he is originally from Medellín, Colombia. His family now lives in Alpharetta.
“Sebastian richly deserves the recognition and support provided by the Beinecke Scholarship” said David S. Williams, associate provost and director of the Honors Program. “He is a devoted and trailblazing leader, using his impressive intellectual abilities to support positive social change.”
In Puerta’s thesis work for his master’s degree, he is studying the makeup and impact of gifted and talented education in Georgia under the direction of Joshua Kinsler, associate professor of economics. This semester, he is also continuing research with Tim Samples, an assistant professor in the Terry College of Business, on the future of investor-state dispute settlement, a topic Puerta researched last summer during his time at the Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In June and July, Puerta will work as a summer research assistant for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“I want to answer impactful social science questions as a tenure-track economist,” he said. “I am who I am not despite my adversity and my diversity but because of it.”
In high school, Puerta noticed a need to encourage Hispanic students toward higher education. He co-founded a chapter of the Hispanic Organization Promoting Education (HoPe), a nonprofit dedicated to changing the lives of Hispanic students through education, leadership and service.
Throughout college, he has held leadership positions with HoPe and, at UGA, the Georgia Political Review, Roosevelt at UGA, Economics Society and UGAvotes. He is a McNair Scholar, received the Correll Scholarship and is a member of the Omicron Delta Kappa society. He was a teaching assistant in the economics department and dances with the UGA Ballroom Performance Group. Off campus, he worked for the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.
Puerta has studied abroad at the London School of Economics and the Universidad de Chile.
The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 in honor of Edwin, Frederick and Walter Beinecke to encourage students of exceptional promise to pursue graduate studies in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Since 1975, the program has selected more than 646 college juniors from more than 110 undergraduate institutions for support during graduate study at any accredited university.
UGA’s first Beinecke Scholar, Shawn Foster, was selected in 2017.
UGA’s major scholarships coordinator is housed in the Honors Program and works closely with students from across campus as they apply for national, high-level scholarships. For more information, visit https://honors.uga.edu/c_s/scholarships/ext/external.html or contact Jessica Hunt at jhunt@uga.edu or 706-542-6206.