Class of 2020 First-Year Fellow: Julia Huebner '20

Julia Huebner '20 was born and raised in the city of Chicago and graduated from Walter Payton College Prep. During high school, Julia was the co-President of her school's freshman mentoring program, the Head Chair of the Model UN Team, and the Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper.

At Dartmouth, Julia has integrated similar interests into her class schedule and extracurricular activities by working as a staff writer for the Opinion section of The Dartmouth and as a member of the Outdoor Leadership Experience (OLE). She’s currently majoring in Government and minoring in Public Policy as well as Human Centered Design.

As a First-Year Fellow, Julia interned at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under the mentorship of Jay Matson ’91. Specifically, Julia worked in FERC’s Office of Enforcement, the branch of the Commission that ensures compliance and enforces energy market regulations for market participants in the United States. Her everyday responsibilities included crafting SQL (a database management coding language) lesson plans and presenting them to the Division of Analytics and Surveillance (DAS) staff, attending staff meetings, querying data for projects, and coding.

According to Julia, “When I arrived at FERC, I had little to no exposure or knowledge of energy markets in the United States, database management, coding, data analytics, and the federal enforcement process. I learned the basics of these topics and more during my time at FERC. My favorite moment this summer was when I live-coded an interactive lab on the basics of SQL to a room full of seasoned FERC staff members. I had arrived at FERC not knowing what SQL was, and by Week 5 of my internship, I was teaching staff about the basics of the language. It was rewarding to realize that my natural gifts need not limit my professional life: although I may not be a “natural coder” nor a computer science major at Dartmouth, I was able to prove to myself that the universe of data science is not beyond my reach, provided I invest the time.”