‘Exceptional’: General Motors internships lead to job as engineer, national award

Julia Hellquist wasn’t sure at first if higher education was the right choice for her. No one in her family previously had gone to college.

However, as someone who liked to “fix things,” when she heard about UW-Stout’s lab-based, applied learning focus she knew it was the right fit. She graduated in December 2023 with a degree in mechanical engineering and a job as an engineer with one of the biggest and best-known companies in the U.S., General Motors.

This past spring, the Ham Lake, Minn., native put a post-graduation exclamation point on her UW-Stout experience by winning the Student Achievement Award from the national Cooperative Education and Internship Association. The honor, the second time in six years a UW-Stout student has won, was based on Hellquist’s four “exceptional” co-op experiences with GM.

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