Temple Grandin, Front Range Community College, Fort Collins, October 3, 2011.

by Tim Van Schmidt

One thing I took away from Dr Temple Grandin's talk at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins on October 3, "Different Kinds of Minds," was a head full of facts and figures. Grandin had a lot of ammunition on hand to support her beliefs that human beings think in a number of different ways and that allowing these differences to flourish was essential to our progress in general. Grandin flashed the ideas on a screen and talked quickly and confidently about these issues at length.

Grandin should know about thinking differently- she has revolutionized how the meatpacking industry handles the processing of cattle while being a person with autism. She attributes her success in part to her autism in that autistics tend to think visually, categorizing information in the brain in a special way that allows the ability to "see" things in a different way than people without autism. In Grandin's case, she put this ability to use visualizing the experience of cattle being hearded into slaughter houses and suggested new designs that eliminated stress for the animals and eased the process.

This is all well known now about Grandin partly because of an excellent 2010 HBO movie special, "Temple Grandin," starring Claire Danes as Grandin. The movie creatively illustrates Grandin's mode of thinking as much as the story of the hurdles she had to get beyond to get her ideas noticed. Grandin was also named among the top 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2010, so her story has seen plenty of attention.

Grandin's appearance at FRCC was being presented by the Learning Opportunity Center and Student Life in observance of "Disability Awareness Month." Speaking as an autistic person, Grandin encouraged students to look to their strengths- their own way of thinking- and develop careers that include those strengths.

But more than picking up a head full of new information from Grandin's talk, I more importantly picked up a new attitude inspired by the speaker herself. Grandin was so very full of information and seemed so eager to share it that I could not help but be taken in by her excitement. It's not enough to just know things, but you must share it too and Grandin is a whirlwind of that as an effective speaker, best-selling author and associate professor at Colorado State University.

After Grandin finished her talk at FRCC, scores of fans lined up by the book store to have books signed and photos taken. It's a reflection of her "star power" so to speak, but also of the strength of her message: we can and should be able to think differently and work together at the same time.