Three Graduates Receive Distinguished Alumni Awards at Millrace Week Dinner

Three UW–Porter Falls graduates received the university’s Distinguished Alumni Awards at the Millrace Week alumni dinner in the Founders Union ballroom, in front of a crowd of about 260 alumni, faculty and families. The awards are chosen each year by a committee of alumni, faculty and Foundation staff from nominations submitted by anyone in the Porter community; nobody nominates themselves.

This year’s recipients:

• Career Achievement — Ingrid Solheim ’86, industrial technology. Solheim started a two-press contract molding shop in a rented Lake City garage in 1994. It now employs 340 people across two plants and has hired 58 Porter graduates, including nine who started as her co-op students.
• Early Career — Amira Haddock ’17, nursing. Haddock directs simulation education at the Lake City regional hospital, where she rebuilt the new-nurse residency around the kind of high-fidelity scenarios she trained on at Porter. She has returned to campus four times to run scenarios with current students in the simulation hospital.
• Service to Porter — Gordon Kjelstad ’79, industrial education. Kjelstad has hosted 41 co-op students at his 14-person machine shop in Cedar Bluff over 26 years, sat on the manufacturing engineering advisory board for 11 of them, and has never once asked for anything in return except “students who show up on time.”

Each recipient receives a cast-iron medallion poured at the Thursday Foundry pour earlier in the week, and a short profile on the alumni pages for the year.

“Gordon told the committee he would only accept if we promised not to make him give a speech. We made him give a speech. It was ninety seconds long and the best one of the night.”

— Hollis Vang, Director of Advancement & Alumni Relations

In her remarks, Solheim told current students in the room that her first job interview after graduation was at a plant that turned her down. “They said I had too much shop-floor experience for an office job and too much degree for the shop floor,” she said. “So I built the place where that combination was the whole point.”

Nominations for the 2026 awards open in January and close May 1. Any student, faculty member, staff member or graduate can submit one through the alumni office. Alumni who want to give time rather than money can also join the alumni mentor network, which is how two of this year’s three recipients first got involved.

Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu