Thanks for joining us on 9 News Plus.
This weekend is the start the
117th National Western Stock
Show in Denver.
It all kicked off on Thursday with
the stock show parade and Doctor
Temple Grandin, a professor at CSU,
served as Grand Marshall.
In addition to serving as Professor
of Animal Science at CSU,
Grandin is a prominent author and
speaker on autism and animal behavior
and was inducted into the National
Women's Hall of Fame in 2017.
Nine News is Jordan Chavez.
Spoke to Granin before the parade
and Doctor Grant today. You're the
grand Marshall. How you feel it
ohh. It's just really really exciting.
I just always great to be
out with cattle people.
Absolutely. Well,
Speaking of cattle people,
we know you for your success in
the animal science industry.
We're curious, how did you
even get started in this?
All those years ago
I got started writing for
our State Farm magazine,
and I went up to the editor
and I got his card and I wrote
an article about my master's
thesis on cattle handling and
different types of squeeze shoots.
Then I became livestock editor
for State Farm magazine.
And then I started designing
facilities one small job at a
time and the way I sold my work.
Was a show drawings that I had done
and pictures of completed jobs.
Where did your interest in this
come from? Who inspired you? Well,
interest in cattle came when I visited
my aunt's ranch when I was a teenager.
So this brings up a really
important thing about careers.
Students get interested in
things they get exposed to,
and if I had not gone to
my aunt's ranch in Arizona,
I would have not have gone into
the cattle industry because
I'm from back East originally.
In all of your accomplishments
that you have on your resume,
do you have one or a couple
that you're most proud of?
Well, I'm very proud.
Some of the facilities I've designed,
they're used all around the around
the country on worked on an auditing
program for evaluating animal
handling and meatpacking plants.
That's worked well.
But now at the age I'm at now,
I want to inspire young people to
grow up and get into good careers
that they're really going to like.
In fact, I got a new book out
now called Visual thinking
where I'm taught one of my big.
Concerns now is skill loss.
We, we are paying the price for taking
the shop classes out of the schools.
Do you want to elaborate on that?
Yes, I would like to elaborate on that.
And let's take for example
something like a poultry processing
plant or pork processing plant.
That equipment is all coming
from Holland now.
We used to make all that stuff here.
No, we paid the price for.
There's a lot of kids that really excel
at the hands on things like shop,
and they don't have an opportunity
to get exposed to that.
So the people I worked with
on cattle handling equipment,
they're retiring and they're
not getting replaced.
I'm very concerned about height
and skills loss in things like
people to fix things,
people to invent mechanical equipment.
That makes a lot of sense.
I want to go back to something
you said you talked about.
Do you want to inspire future generations?
What is the legacy you would like
to leave behind and the message
you have for future generations?
Well, I want to see the kids that are
different get into really good careers
where they can make a contribution.
And in my new book, visual thinking,
I discussed the visual thinkers
like me thinking pictures.
There's another kind of thinker
that thinks in mathematics,
and then the word thinkers and kids
that are my kind of mind are going to
be good at mechanical things, animals,
photography, things of this sort.
And I think it's really important
that the schools get kids exposed
to a lot of different careers.
They've taken out all these classes
in some places, art, music, sewing,
woodworking, home economics,
welding, auto shop,
because these give students an opportunity
to try different things to find out
if it's the right thing for them.
You said children who are
different, like me. Well, I
I I was a severely,
severely autistic kid and did
not talk until about age 4.
I was the kind of kid that they
didn't didn't think would go anywhere.