APEX alum Queenie Wong is the first high school student to accept a full-time position after graduation as a Quality Technician with APEX premier partner, Accumold. Queenie participated in the Iowa Learns Program during her senior year. She is part of the second cohort group Accumold has hosted. Read her student blog below:

My name is Queenie Wong, I signed up for APEX my junior and senior year at Waukee because I was interested in the Engineering, Technology, and Robotics, and the Construction Leadership course. 

I first learned about Accumold through ETR my junior year. In my Senior year, my instructor, Tyler Wright, came to me with an opportunity to participate in Accumold’s internship program for students, with the choice to continue working for them after we graduated. I ended up deciding to continue working after graduation because I liked the work environment and what I was going to be doing.

In APEX, I got to learn hands-on about making technical drawings and how to read them and creating 3D models. Accumold has helped me in this area as well by giving me GD&T classes, as well as being able to look at genuine manufacturing drawings and being able to use my experience from APEX to be able to read them.

For now, my plan post-graduation is to simply keep working at Accumold as a Quality Technician there. Perhaps after a couple years of working, I might go to DMACC for two years and Iowa State University for another two years with the help of Accumold.

Before I started my internship, my plans for the future were pretty undecided until Tyler came to me with this opportunity. I knew I didn’t necessarily want to go to college, so hearing that I could be offered a job straight out of high school was appealing to me. After interning there for 6+ months and seeing the work that I would be doing, and the work culture I had there, I ended up really liking it and accepted their job offer