Training, Work Experience, Teaching and Professional Development

Just Who is Oliver W. Siebert?

To his wife (as he was to his mother) he is Oliver, to his family he is also known as Ozzie (somehow, Ozzie never caught on at Monsanto); most people call him Oliver and Ollie.

He was born and raised in a so-called `scrubby-Dutch' German community in St. Louis, Missouri. After high school, he completed an apprenticeship as a tool and die maker (and worked for Sunnen Products Co. and Moog Industries producing various items for the war effort). He began his university studies in electrical engineering at Washington University as a night school student. He joined the Army and after he learned about soldering, entered the Army college program, ASTP. He studied at the University of Nebraska and Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, MSM, Rolla (before it became UMR). Unfortunately (then [for his academic career]), the invasion of Europe was going to need lots of bodies so it was back to the Army, short of his BS and a commission by 1-1/2 semesters. He missed the initial D-Day landings but was part of the first WWII troops to land directly in France from the U.S. After all the typical war medals and other hero-type stuff as a corporal in an infantry Division and, as an "assigned/field-commissioned" artillery forward observer officer, he received a field-appointment to West Point. A German `guest' for several days, he rejoined the war in enough time to become a casualty during that mixed-up Battle of the Bulge. Obviously, in true Army style, the paper-work for West Point didn't catch-up with him until he was awaiting medical discharge back in the U.S. after the war was over. Siebert chose civilian life (had he accepted West Point, he could have spent at up to four years in Korea, even longer in Viet Nam, and would have missed all that good Industrial experience). As the years have taken their toll, that Army disability now dictates some limitations.

Post-war, Siebert switched from EE to ME at Washington University and did his graduate studies in Metallurgical Engineering at their Sever Institute of Technology. Virginia and Oliver were married before he completed school.

His first job as a professional was at Carondelet Foundry in St. Louis as Plant Engineer and Assistant Chief Metallurgist. His first career deviation was to be lead engineer on an Air Force wind tunnel project for (the then) Sverdrup and Parcel Engineers - - the photo in his office is of that unit, (yet today) the worlds largest axial-flow air compressor.

Siebert started at Monsanto in 1950, it was for a job at their Queeny Plant. Complications because Mrs. Siebert was also on the payroll and had Queeny connections; he ended up as a Maintenance Supervisor at the Monsanto Plant B, now Krummrich. He later filled an original vacancy as Corrosion Engineer. This ultimately led to his becoming Senior Engineering Specialist in charge, then Superintendent of their Materials and Mechanical Engineering Department. Siebert went back to Washington University in their evening school program in Chemical Engineering. By then, Siebert was doing materials of construction consulting and failure analysis for the Monsanto Organic and Inorganic Divisions. He functioned as a Corporate MOC consultant.

Siebert transferred to the Corporate Engineering Department and was appointed an Engineering Fellow in 1971; he retired as a Senior Fellow in 1985.

Professor Siebert has been on the adjunct faculty engineering staff of Washington University for the past forty-nine years, is presently a professor in their graduate school of chemical engineering and has taught in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, AIChE, Continuing Education program for the past twenty-nine years. Siebert was a delegate to the White House Conference on Education for thirty-eight years.

Siebert has been active in the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, NACE, since 1950; presently Honored as a Fellow of the NACE. He held all jobs in the local St. Louis section and chaired the annual on-day education seminar for over twenty-years. Siebert held most of the North Central Region jobs and was elected National Director of NACE for three years, was a member of the education committee for thirteen years and he received the 1970 Citation of Recognition from the National NACE and the same award from the St. Louis section in 1982; Siebert presented the Plenary Lecture at Corrosion/86, and was elected an NACE Fellow. He has chaired NACE Technical Practices committees on the CPI, Plastics, Metals Industries, chaired numerous symposia, presented and published many papers.

Siebert has been a member of the American Society for Testing and Materials, ASTM, gasket committee for over twenty-five years, as well as committees on plastics, ceramics and corrosion.

He helped form the AIChE Materials Engineering and Science Division, MESD, during the 60's and was elected to two-year terms as a board member five times and was past 2nd Vice Chairman. Early in MESD, Siebert initiated the formation of the Federation of Materials Societies, FMS, and was Honored by election as an AIChE Fellow in 1997.

Past Chairman and Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME, Code Committee on non-pressure RTP plastics, Siebert was editor of the ASME monthly publication, The Forge, for seven years and was honored as an ASME Life-Fellow.

In addition, Siebert has been active in the American Society for Metals, ASM (committee on the ASM Handbook); American Welding Society, AWS (wrote a chapter on welding stainless steel for the Welding Education Course); a Life-Fellow and Board Member in the American College of Forensic Examiners, ACFE; Society for the Plastic Industry; SPI (RTP Structures Committee); Electrochemical Society, ECS; Steel Structures Painting Council, SSPC; and Acoustic Emission Working Group, AEWG.

Siebert was a past president of the Monsanto chapter of Sigma Xi and also a member of Pi Tau Sigma and Tau Beta Pi. He is a registered professional engineer in Missouri and California. He is the author/coauthor of over one-hundred twenty technical papers, editor of three books, coeditor of the MOC Section of the 6th and 7th Editions of Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook and has presented numerous talks to technical and social organizations.

During October/November 1988, Professor Siebert was a United Nations Distinguished Visiting Scholar to Beijing Technological University, People's Republic of China followed by a month-long consulting tour of chemical, petroleum, petrochemical and other manufacturing facilities throughout China. He was appointed by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO, at the recommendation of the faculty at Beijing (his vita notes that he has been on the staff at Washington University since 1953). Professor Siebert has also been a visiting professor at the University of Strasbourg (Fr.) in 1970, at the University of Monterrey (Mex), in July 1989 - again, for the UN, lectured at the University of Kyoto (Japan) in 1972, University of Strasbourg, France in 1970 and was an annual visiting lecturer at the University of Missouri-Rolla from 1968-1979.

In 1985 he formed Siebert Materials Engineering, Inc., SMEI, a full-service consulting engineering firm that is constituted to serve industrial, legal, insurance, governmental and academic clients with state-of-the art capabilities in the areas of materials, corrosion, mechanical and structural engineering, failure analysis/Forensic Engineering, i.e., materials engineering. In legal work, SMEI personnel defend failure studies as a Fact Witness; SMEI personnel do not function as `Professional' Expert Witnesses.

During all of that the Sieberts have four lovely daughters, five granddaughters (three completed college [working and teaching]) and four grandsons.