Awards & Scholarships

Heivilin is vice president, Raw Materials Development, for Oil-Dri Corp. of America. He has a B.S. degree in geology from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and an M.S. in geology from Southern Illinois University. He has worked more than 41 years in the United States in exploration, drilling, acquiring reserves, permitting, mining, purchase of working plants, building new plants and manufacturing refractory, bentonite and fullers-earth clays. Heivilin has obtained a patent on a clay deposit in a Bureau of Land Management wilderness study area and has worked on the start of a mine in a U. S. Wildlife Refuge with endangered species. He has acquired raw materials for a refractory calcining plant for bauxites and kaolin and constructed two fulle's-earth plants. He acquired materials for three sites not yet constructed. He has worked on the purchase of four plants while maintaining more than 35 years of reserves for seven fulle's-earth plants. Heivilin has served SME as chair of the Industrial Minerals Division and a member of the Board of Directors. He has chaired two crystalline silica Symposia. He is a contributing author to two editions of Industrial Minerals and Rocks and has been a speaker and chair for many technical sessions. He is a member of the new committee on registered members.