Oellermann was born in
Vryheid. She earned a bachelor's degree,
cum laude honours, and a master's degree at the
University of Natal in 1981, 1982, and 1983 respectively, as a student of
Henda Swart. She completed her Ph.D. in 1986 at
Western Michigan University. Her dissertation was
Generalized Connectivity in Graphs and was supervised by
Gary Chartrand. Oellermann taught at the
University of Durban-Westville, Western Michigan University, University of Natal, and
Brandon University, before moving to Winnipeg in 1996. At Winnipeg, she was co-chair of mathematics and statistics for 2011–2013. ==Contributions==