Little did recent Turner College graduate Sebastian Nunez know that taking dual-enrollment courses while a high school student would lead him to earn, not one, but two bachelor’s degrees — from two different Georgia universities. The 2023 finance graduate was among Columbus State’s nearly 950 graduates who earned more than 580 bachelor’s degrees this past spring. Just a week prior to walking the stage in Frank G. Lumpkin Jr. Center to receive his CSU degree, Nunez did the same at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he completed and was awarded a mechanical engineering degree. Nunez began his college studies in 2015 at the age of 16 and as a junior at Harris County High School in Hamilton, Georgia — 35 minutes outside Columbus. After first taking an Advancement Placement (AP) course, he tried dual-enrollment courses as an alternative to AP courses and to completing his last two years of high school. “Most high schoolers who take AP and dual-enrollment classes want to get ahead,” he explained. “But AP classes and testing can be expensive, and I learned that I could take dual-enrollment classes for free, earn college credits that counted toward my college GPA, and get college experience learning from university-level professors at the same time. My parents spent more money on that one AP class than the three actual college classes that were guaranteed to count toward my degree in the future,” he continued. “And, I got As in all three [of my first dual-enrollment] classes, including economics.” Nunez’s dual-enrollment experience eventually led him to take in-person classes on CSU’s Main Campus and learn alongside college-aged classmates — all while still a high school junior. While he alternated between his high school campus and CSU’s Main Campus his junior year, he studied exclusively at CSU his senior year of high school as a dual-enrollment student. “I didn’t go to my high school once my senior year, except maybe to complete some paperwork,” he recalled. Eventually, he completed about 60 credit hours — the equivalent of two years of college studies — through dual enrolling during fall, spring and summer semesters by the time he graduated from high school. That allowed him to get some of the basic core courses under his belt, as well as prerequisites to several advanced courses in his major.
While it may sound isolating to be a 17-year-old separated from his high school friends during his senior year, Nunez found ways to remain connected. “I had a handful of friends from high school who I would text and with whom I remained social,” he said. “And, some of them dual enrolled as well, so I would just see them at CSU.” As a newly minted high school graduate, Nunez began his full-time college studies in August 2017 at the age of 18 and with enough credits to be classified as a college junior. “I’m fresh out of high school and that’s when I started taking classes in my major, like managerial finance and accounting,” Nunez said. “[Full-time college life] was definitely an adjustment compared to my previous two years as a dually enrolled high school student. There was a slight transition period, but it wasn’t too bad; it was pretty smooth overall.” Nunez credits his sister, Isabella (who is older by two and a half years), transferring from Emory University to CSU as one advantage to making that smooth high-school-to-college transition. He indicated that her interests in finance and engineering aligning with his meant they shared similar classes and outside interests. One of those interests included the student organization “She’s the First,” a chapter of which Isabella founded at CSU during her studies, with the goal of creating educational opportunities for girls in developing nations. “That was one of the first things I got heavily involved with because she asked me,” he said. “Isabella didn’t really know anyone at CSU except me, so she was like, ‘hey, would you like to help me with this?’ And I said, ‘sure.’” Nunez recalled She’s the First gave both him and Isabella opportunities to network with their classmates as they created awareness about the organization, recruited members, identified a slate of club officers, and planned events and fundraisers. He said he has remained very close with two members of that original volunteer group — him celebrating their marriage and them celebrating his recent graduations.
Nunez also found ways to get involved around his major, especially through CSU’s chapter of the Financial Management Association (FMA). The organization provided him with opportunities to develop leadership experience (he served as its president, then vice president) as well as to network and benefit from career guidance with CPAs and financial advisors. FMA also allowed him to develop mentoring relationships with Turner College faculty. In particular, Nunez cited Joshua Brooks, Brett Cotten, and Gisung Moon as being knowledgeable in their fields and always accessible to their students. Brooks and Nunez shared interests in both finance and engineering — and Brooks had an engineering background before specializing in business disciplines like risk, insurance and real estate. It was with Brooks that Nunez traveled with the FMA chapter to Quinnipiac University’s G.A.M.E. Forum, the world’s largest student-run financial conference. “FMA, faculty mentorships and attending events like the G.A.M.E. Forum helped me build a sense of community and became foundations for my studies that I believe will advance my future career,” said Nunez, pictured on the back row, with Brooks standing to his left. “They provided me a deep view into systems, processes and business interactions that I would otherwise lack only as an engineer.” As Nunez continued his FMA involvement and progressed through his finance studies, he turned his sights to engineering as well — using his time at Columbus State to complete 24 prerequisite courses that included computer science, dynamics, thermodynamics and statics. Abiye Seifu taught most of Nunez’s prerequisite courses, and he also served as Nunez’s advisor for the dual degree program with Georgia Tech. Nunez credits Seifu with heavily influencing his academic transition from finance to engineering — even driving Nunez to Georgia Tech to attend a conference for transfer and dual-degree students.
While still a student at Columbus State, Nunez fed his interests in engineering by joining the newly established Robotics Engineering Club. As one of the club’s first presidents, he continued developing his leadership skills while expanding his network and exploring his academic interests. All the while, he continued benefiting from building lifelong relationships with faculty, which now included Robotics Engineering Club advisor Lavi Zamstein, and Eric Spears, who as director of the university’s Center for Global Engagement, helped Nunez secure a semester-long study abroad civil engineering internship experience in Brazil. “Sebastian did a summer internship, in English, in São Paulo, Brazil with CSU's international education partner, campus b,” Spears said. “While in Brazil, Sebastian worked in a company that focused on engineering and business development. He also learned Portuguese while abroad. Integrating an internship with study abroad language courses made him career-ready for a successful career in the global economy." As a peer tutor, Nunez found he was able to keep his math and physics skills sharp while helping him further build an on-campus network as he helped his classmates. Ultimately, it was that network of tutoring work, participating in on-campus organizations and being mentored by faculty that fostered for him a sense of campus community. “With CSU being a smaller school [compared to places like Georgia Tech], there was a kind of community feel not just between students, but between students and faculty as well. As a result, I felt like all my professors were well acquainted with me and with pretty much every other student in our classes. I for one had solid relationships with my primary finance professors [Brooks, Cotten and Moon] and engineering professors [Seifu and Zamstein].”
As Nunez completed most of the requirements for his CSU finance degree, he turned his full-time attention to mechanical engineering. In Summer 2021, he enrolled full-time at Georgia Tech after taking a gap semester in the spring to work full time and earn money for his continued studies. He admitted pursuing bachelor’s degrees at two different universities did require some finessing and the help from advisors at both schools to navigate the process. He also credited the ability to take online courses at Columbus State while studying in-person at Georgia Tech to make the scenario a possible one. While some may see the two disciplines as vastly different, Nunez explained their similarities and how they complement one other. “In reality, they both heavily rely on systems: designs and circuits in engineering, and processes and formulas in finance and accounting,” he said. “In fact, Brooks was an engineer himself before he moved to finance, and he brought many of those dual concepts into his teaching. I’ve found my engineering coursework to have helped me with my analytical skills and report-writing, which obviously are pluses for someone with finance interests as well.” Career-wise, Nunez expects to apply his education first in the mechanical engineering field. He is looking to specialize in design- and manufacturing-focused engineering — and eventually earn his professional engineering license. He later looks to leverage that experience by shifting to project management, giving him the opportunity to employ his finance knowledge and crunch numbers — possibly in an engineering or consulting setting. “I believe my finance degree will definitely help me a bit in the project management arena, especially strategic management, which we covered a great deal in my studies at CSU,” Nunez said, indicating a future MBA may be in the cards as well.
If there’s one word that marks Nunez’s academic career, it’s “persistence.” He credits his parents’ military service — his father, an active-duty lieutenant colonel; and his mother, on staff with the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service — as role models for him and his sister (Nunez pictured third from left with his mother, sister and father). “As a military family, we worked as a team to get through all the challenges we faced regularly from frequent moves and deployments,” which included nine domestic and foreign moves, 13 different schools, and his father’s four years of deployments. “I relied on and learned from my mother’s strength and perseverance, as well as my older sister’s guidance as I navigated college and followed in her footsteps studying finance and engineering. The work ethic and commitment I learned from them, as well as academic and work experience, will allow me to excel in my professional and personal life.” He noted that — through military tuition assistance, dual enrollment, working to pay for part of his college, and coordinating his dual enrollment at CSU and Georgia Tech with his academic advisors — he graduated debt-free. Nunez’s sister Isabella isn’t slouching either. She graduated with an associate of science degree in core curriculum and two bachelor’s degrees in finance and applied mathematics from CSU. She’s now found niche as a software engineer at Capital One working in the company’s enterprise data and machine learning line of business. Taking no time to even hang his two new degrees on the wall, Nunez is back in the classroom working on several micro-certifications to move him closer to his short- and long-term career goals. Those short-term goals include preparing for and passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam — generally the first step in the process of becoming a licensed professional engineer.
While it may sound isolating to be a 17-year-old separated from his high school friends during his senior year, Nunez found ways to remain connected. “I had a handful of friends from high school who I would text and with whom I remained social,” he said. “And, some of them dual enrolled as well, so I would just see them at CSU.” As a newly minted high school graduate, Nunez began his full-time college studies in August 2017 at the age of 18 and with enough credits to be classified as a college junior. “I’m fresh out of high school and that’s when I started taking classes in my major, like managerial finance and accounting,” Nunez said. “[Full-time college life] was definitely an adjustment compared to my previous two years as a dually enrolled high school student. There was a slight transition period, but it wasn’t too bad; it was pretty smooth overall.” Nunez credits his sister, Isabella (who is older by two and a half years), transferring from Emory University to CSU as one advantage to making that smooth high-school-to-college transition. He indicated that her interests in finance and engineering aligning with his meant they shared similar classes and outside interests. One of those interests included the student organization “She’s the First,” a chapter of which Isabella founded at CSU during her studies, with the goal of creating educational opportunities for girls in developing nations. “That was one of the first things I got heavily involved with because she asked me,” he said. “Isabella didn’t really know anyone at CSU except me, so she was like, ‘hey, would you like to help me with this?’ And I said, ‘sure.’” Nunez recalled She’s the First gave both him and Isabella opportunities to network with their classmates as they created awareness about the organization, recruited members, identified a slate of club officers, and planned events and fundraisers. He said he has remained very close with two members of that original volunteer group — him celebrating their marriage and them celebrating his recent graduations.
Nunez also found ways to get involved around his major, especially through CSU’s chapter of the Financial Management Association (FMA). The organization provided him with opportunities to develop leadership experience (he served as its president, then vice president) as well as to network and benefit from career guidance with CPAs and financial advisors. FMA also allowed him to develop mentoring relationships with Turner College faculty. In particular, Nunez cited Joshua Brooks, Brett Cotten, and Gisung Moon as being knowledgeable in their fields and always accessible to their students. Brooks and Nunez shared interests in both finance and engineering — and Brooks had an engineering background before specializing in business disciplines like risk, insurance and real estate. It was with Brooks that Nunez traveled with the FMA chapter to Quinnipiac University’s G.A.M.E. Forum, the world’s largest student-run financial conference. “FMA, faculty mentorships and attending events like the G.A.M.E. Forum helped me build a sense of community and became foundations for my studies that I believe will advance my future career,” said Nunez, pictured on the back row, with Brooks standing to his left. “They provided me a deep view into systems, processes and business interactions that I would otherwise lack only as an engineer.” As Nunez continued his FMA involvement and progressed through his finance studies, he turned his sights to engineering as well — using his time at Columbus State to complete 24 prerequisite courses that included computer science, dynamics, thermodynamics and statics. Abiye Seifu taught most of Nunez’s prerequisite courses, and he also served as Nunez’s advisor for the dual degree program with Georgia Tech. Nunez credits Seifu with heavily influencing his academic transition from finance to engineering — even driving Nunez to Georgia Tech to attend a conference for transfer and dual-degree students.
While still a student at Columbus State, Nunez fed his interests in engineering by joining the newly established Robotics Engineering Club. As one of the club’s first presidents, he continued developing his leadership skills while expanding his network and exploring his academic interests. All the while, he continued benefiting from building lifelong relationships with faculty, which now included Robotics Engineering Club advisor Lavi Zamstein, and Eric Spears, who as director of the university’s Center for Global Engagement, helped Nunez secure a semester-long study abroad civil engineering internship experience in Brazil. “Sebastian did a summer internship, in English, in São Paulo, Brazil with CSU's international education partner, campus b,” Spears said. “While in Brazil, Sebastian worked in a company that focused on engineering and business development. He also learned Portuguese while abroad. Integrating an internship with study abroad language courses made him career-ready for a successful career in the global economy." As a peer tutor, Nunez found he was able to keep his math and physics skills sharp while helping him further build an on-campus network as he helped his classmates. Ultimately, it was that network of tutoring work, participating in on-campus organizations and being mentored by faculty that fostered for him a sense of campus community. “With CSU being a smaller school [compared to places like Georgia Tech], there was a kind of community feel not just between students, but between students and faculty as well. As a result, I felt like all my professors were well acquainted with me and with pretty much every other student in our classes. I for one had solid relationships with my primary finance professors [Brooks, Cotten and Moon] and engineering professors [Seifu and Zamstein].”
As Nunez completed most of the requirements for his CSU finance degree, he turned his full-time attention to mechanical engineering. In Summer 2021, he enrolled full-time at Georgia Tech after taking a gap semester in the spring to work full time and earn money for his continued studies. He admitted pursuing bachelor’s degrees at two different universities did require some finessing and the help from advisors at both schools to navigate the process. He also credited the ability to take online courses at Columbus State while studying in-person at Georgia Tech to make the scenario a possible one. While some may see the two disciplines as vastly different, Nunez explained their similarities and how they complement one other. “In reality, they both heavily rely on systems: designs and circuits in engineering, and processes and formulas in finance and accounting,” he said. “In fact, Brooks was an engineer himself before he moved to finance, and he brought many of those dual concepts into his teaching. I’ve found my engineering coursework to have helped me with my analytical skills and report-writing, which obviously are pluses for someone with finance interests as well.” Career-wise, Nunez expects to apply his education first in the mechanical engineering field. He is looking to specialize in design- and manufacturing-focused engineering — and eventually earn his professional engineering license. He later looks to leverage that experience by shifting to project management, giving him the opportunity to employ his finance knowledge and crunch numbers — possibly in an engineering or consulting setting. “I believe my finance degree will definitely help me a bit in the project management arena, especially strategic management, which we covered a great deal in my studies at CSU,” Nunez said, indicating a future MBA may be in the cards as well.
If there’s one word that marks Nunez’s academic career, it’s “persistence.” He credits his parents’ military service — his father, an active-duty lieutenant colonel; and his mother, on staff with the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service — as role models for him and his sister (Nunez pictured third from left with his mother, sister and father). “As a military family, we worked as a team to get through all the challenges we faced regularly from frequent moves and deployments,” which included nine domestic and foreign moves, 13 different schools, and his father’s four years of deployments. “I relied on and learned from my mother’s strength and perseverance, as well as my older sister’s guidance as I navigated college and followed in her footsteps studying finance and engineering. The work ethic and commitment I learned from them, as well as academic and work experience, will allow me to excel in my professional and personal life.” He noted that — through military tuition assistance, dual enrollment, working to pay for part of his college, and coordinating his dual enrollment at CSU and Georgia Tech with his academic advisors — he graduated debt-free. Nunez’s sister Isabella isn’t slouching either. She graduated with an associate of science degree in core curriculum and two bachelor’s degrees in finance and applied mathematics from CSU. She’s now found niche as a software engineer at Capital One working in the company’s enterprise data and machine learning line of business. Taking no time to even hang his two new degrees on the wall, Nunez is back in the classroom working on several micro-certifications to move him closer to his short- and long-term career goals. Those short-term goals include preparing for and passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam — generally the first step in the process of becoming a licensed professional engineer.
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