All her life, Valarie Boatman, a 2006 mechanical engineering graduate, has been interested in two things: racing and cars.

At Missouri S&T, she spent 40-50 hours each week in the Formula SAE shop designing and fabricating the race car.

Today, as a performance integration engineer for General Motors, she spends her days at Milford Proving Grounds, testing some of the electronic chassis controls in the electric-powered Chevrolet Volt and working to improve a driver’s experience and safety behind the wheel.

“Even though the software is already in the car, my job is to drive it and make any necessary tweaks to fine-tune its performance,” she says. “That way, once the car is in the customer’s hands, it will run as seamlessly as possible.”

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