ChemE alumni receive college's Distinguished Service Awards

JEFFREY J. SIIROLA may have contributed as much to his field through committees and advisory boards as he has through his position as a technology Fellow in the chemical process research labs of Eastman Chemical Company's chemicals technology group, based in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Jeffrey J. Siirola (16K JPG)

Jeff joined Eastman Kodak Co. in 1966 as an undergraduate intern. In 1972 after serving in the Army, he began his career at Eastman Kodak. Some of his accomplishments include developing and applying process-synthesis methods and tools for inventing better industrial-chemical processes; designing, simulating, optimizing and economically evaluating computer-aided process designs; conserving and recovering resources, and assessing chemical technology.

He also has served on more than 35 university industrial-advisory, journal editorial-advisory, National Science Foundation and government boards and committees. He is a director and fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and has been active in its computing and systems technology division. He also is a member of the American Chemical Society, American Society for Chemical Engineering Education, and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, and is an industrial trustee and former president of the Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering Education Corporation.

In addition to his technical career, Jeff is a member of the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce and helped initiate the city's curbside recycling program and what is believed to be the oldest Christmas-tree recycling program in the nation. He has been director of the Bays Mountain Park Association, and for 30 years has helped maintain the Appalachian Trail.

Jeff earned his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Utah and PhD in chemical engineering from UW-Madison. He is married to Sharon (Atwood), a hand weaver who also attended graduate school at UW-Madison. They have a son, John, 22, a chemical engineering senior at Purdue University; and a daughter, Jennifer, 20, a sophomore at Notre Dame.

Although HARVEY D. SPANGLER's engineering career took him as far afield as the Philippines, his work was never very far from his farming roots in Loyal, Wisconsin.

Harvey D. Spangler (25K JPG)

After he graduated from UW-Madison in 1956 with a BS in chemical engineering and a commission in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Harvey worked for what is now the Exxon Research & Engineering Co. in New Jersey. Initially he focused on operating problems of fluid catalytic crackers and later designed various refineries and chemical plants.

Harvey contributed his design expertise as one of a small group of engineers who helped develop Exxon's ammonia and fertilizer business in the 1960s. Because of the division's success, Exxon sent Harvey to the Philippines as a start-up engineer for a fertilizer plant it was constructing there.

In 1967 he joined Farmland Industries, a Kansas City-based farmers' cooperative and the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the free world at the time. At Farmland, he was involved in designing, constructing and operating the ammonia-manufacturing plant in Dodge City, Kansas, and three years later he took a more business-oriented position. As manager of the ammonia plant in Fort Dodge, Iowa, he not only solved operating problems but developed business relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, peers and other professionals.

In 1979 Harvey was selected to be a member of the Ammonia Safety Committee, a subcommittee of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE), and was the committee's chair in 1985. He also was chair of the AICHE Safety and Health Division in 1989. He retired in 1991.

Among his contributions to ammonia-plant design is a patented system that makes high-pressure process steam using low-temperature heat. The system is co-patented worldwide.

These days, at his Sherman, Texas, home, Harvey enjoys woodworking, shooting, fishing, dancing and traveling. His son, Allan, is a retired U.S. Marine living in Oceanside, California. His daughter, Karen Walton, lives in Berea, Ohio, and like her father, has a BS in chemical engineering. She also has an MS in environmental engineering.