by Annette Wood
The graduate student and Mark walked across the street, where she introduced him to Temple. Mark and Temple clicked right away. They did research together and soon published articles in scientific journals.
Four years after they met, the owner of the building in which they worked came by to say he wanted a new facility. “I can design that,” said Mark.
“Give it a shot,” said Temple.
Mark did a scale drawing by hand, using the paper, pencils, and rulers Temple had advised him to use. He followed what she said, using the same tools, and produced 24-by-36-inch blueprint drawings for buildings during the next several years. By that time, engineers were using the AutoCAD program for drawings. Mark decided he wanted to work with AutoCAD.
Temple sent him to school to learn AutoCAD. Now he utilizes the program all the time. And he is currently Temple’s employee.
Temple and Mark work together a great deal, often having lunch together on Saturday at one of two restaurants. He said their lunches are a combination of business and pleasure. They talk about what he’s working on and what she’s doing.
Mark has learned to deal with Temple’s autism. “Getting to know Temple and understand her has been an experience. If she looks at you with a glazed look, there are no pictures in the pile for her, you have to find something that triggers the pack … People with autism focus on one subject, and go on and on with everything they know about a subject,” said Mark. “You can’t do a power lunch when talking about one thing.”
Mark has learned to interrupt Temple when he has heard what he wants to know about the subject. “If I know what she’s going to say, I just go on,” he said. “People think it’s rude to interrupt. Sometimes I find myself interrupting other people, especially if I know what the conversation’s about. It’s hard to balance my personal life and my relationship with Temple.
“It’s been a learning experience. In autism, some parts of the brain don’t function well; some parts overfunction. Temple pays a lot of attention to detail, and that’s rubbed off on me.”
Mark and Temple always manage to find levity in situations they’re discussing. However, “Temple doesn’t get one-liner jokes. Her humor is unique, even childlike,” he said.
As Mark’s friendship and work relationship with Temple grew, her influence increased among livestock producers. Cattle organizations often invited Temple to speak because she had excellent slides and visuals. Delivery of the information was important, too. Temple absorbed helpful comments from the evaluation forms that audience members filled out. She read articles about public speaking and discovered humor was frequently mentioned, so she added jokes to her lectures. “If people laughed, I kept it. If they didn’t, I’d remove it and try another,” she said.4
She was asked to edit Livestock Handling and Transport, a book published in 1993 by CAB International in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. The third edition of the same publication, which she also edited, appeared in 2007. The goal of the book was to bring together the latest research and practical information on animal handling as well as the design of facilities and transport.
Much had changed during the intervening years, including increasing awareness of animal welfare around the world, especially in South America, Asia, and India. Another important change was the development of effective auditing programs for large, corporate meat buyers such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King. The fourth edition, edited by Temple, was published in 2014.
All aspects of animal handling are covered: handling for veterinary and husbandry procedures; stress physiology; restraint methods; transport, corral, and stockyard design; handling at slaughter plants; and welfare. Animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs, deer, and poultry are discussed.
In one article about transporting cattle, Temple’s co-author was Carmen Gallo from Valdivia, Chile. Both authors have observed that on overloaded trucks, there is a higher incidence of severely bruised cattle. They listed several causes of cattle truck rollovers: driver fatigue, going too fast around corners, and narrow roads with soft shoulders. South America has many gravel dirt roads that bend and wind.
Wendy Fulwider, a graduate student of Temple’s, co-authored an article in Livestock Handling and Transport about dairy cattle. Robots that perform the duties that the farmer would regularly do are popular on smaller family dairies with about 150–200 cows, she noted. “Producers appreciated that the robot gave them the opportunity to, for example, attend their children’s school events without having to plan around milking times.”5
A second book Temple edited was Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals in 1998, published by Academic Press. She said: “The purpose of this book is to bridge the gap between the field of behavior genetics and research on behavior published in the animal and science and veterinary literature.”
Both Temple and Mark Deesing have years of practical experience with animals, but no experience in the behavior genetics laboratory. They co-authored an article on genetics and animal welfare that was included in the book.
For example, they noted: “Due to genetic selection, the ability of a chicken to gain weight has increased phenomenally. In 1923, it took 16 weeks to produce a broiler chicken. In 1993, only 6–1/2 weeks was required.”6
Many concerns have surfaced because of genetic alterations. “When one selects for one trait, many other traits will be affected,” they noted. “It is often difficult to predict which traits will be changed.”7
Although Temple possesses extraordinary empathy for all animals, she doesn’t have much feeling otherwise. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author, wrote about her incredible mind in An Anthropologist on Mars in 1995. She consistently compares her mind to a computer with many files. She can store lots of information and retrieve it at will. But like a computer, she lacks feeling. “The emotion circuit’s not hooked up, that’s what’s wrong,” she said.8
“I only understand simple emotions like fear, anger, happiness and sadness,” she wrote in an earlier book.9 “There is a process for using my intellect and logical decision-making for every social decision. Emotion does not guide my decision. It is pure computing.”10
Even music does not move her, though Temple has perfect pitch. She isn’t transported to a place where logic and reason and language can’t go. She doesn’t connect with music, usually an international language.
The same is true with nature. Temple lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and knows the mountains are pretty, but is not inspired or comforted by their beauty. She fails to understand why others are stirred by their grandeur.
Temple knows she can’t empathize with other people’s feelings. She doesn’t interpret the undercurrents of emotion, the smiles, the tears, the shrugs, or the frowns that most people follow automatically on the basis of experience and encounters with others.
To compensate, she has built up a library of experiences over time, videotapes in her mind, which she plays over and over again to learn how people act in different circumstances. “She had complemented her experience by constant reading, including reading of trade journals and the Wall Street Journal—all of which enlarged her knowledge of the species. ‘It is strictly a logical process,’ she explained,” Oliver Sacks wrote.11
“All my life, I have been an observer and I’ve always watched from the outside,” Temple herself noted.12 “Even today I do not feel like a grownup in the realm of social relationships.”13
She finds much more satisfaction in her work than in being social. “I can act social, but it’s like being in a play,” she said. When she’s around people she knows, she joins in the conversation, laughs, and cracks jokes. According to Frith, routine social relationships are well within the grasp of a person with Asperger’s.
Temple makes social contacts at work. “Some of the best times in my life have been working on construction projects. I can relate to people who produce tangible results,” she said.14
Temple finds friendship, a one-on-one relationship with another person, more difficu
lt. In Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Frith writes: “Asperger’s Syndrome individuals … do not seem to possess the knack of entering and maintaining two-way personal relationships.”
However, Temple has found a friend in Mark Deesing, her only employee, co-author, and research assistant. He designs facilities for ranchers and works with employee training and handling in the slaughterhouses. They both work out of their homes. Temple travels all week, every week. Their business time together is on the phone or for lunch.
“She’s very routine-oriented. That will never change. She calculates down to the minute when she leaves the house to go to the airport. She always calculates time for lunch, getting her shoes shined at the airport, and the number of phone calls to return. She calls me as she’s walking down the gateway to the airplane,” said Mark. “She talks until they close the door. It’s part of the routine.”
Temple considers sexual relationships off-limits. At a TEACCH conference at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Temple startled Tammy Esposito, principal at Levy, a school for severely handicapped children, when she announced to a room of perhaps two hundred people: “I don’t have a sex life.”
Temple has never dated. “I’ve remained celibate because doing so helps me avoid the many complicated social situations that are too difficult for me to handle,” she said. “Even today, romantic love is just not part of my life. And you know what? That’s okay with me.”15
CHAPTER 7
PROFESSOR AT COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
Since 1990, Temple Grandin has been a professor at Colorado State University. Just when the stirrings of concern for animal welfare were at the beginning, she landed at CSU. Temple accelerated that process remarkably. She combined engineering, construction, psychology, and animal science to help vanquish needless suffering for millions of animals.
In the process, Temple became an international success, providing worldwide media exposure to the livestock industry and issues related to animal care. She has appeared on television shows such as 20/20, 48 Hours, CNN, Larry King Live, and 60 Minutes. Interviews with Temple have been broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States and similar stations in Europe. She has been featured in People magazine, the New York Times, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and Time magazine. In 2010, Time named her one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.
Colorado State University in the mountain town of Fort Collins serves more than thirty thousand students. Thousands have taken classes from Temple. “I can hardly believe I’m studying with Temple Grandin,” said Ruth Wiowade, Temple’s graduate research assistant in 2011. “She’s the best in the world at what she does, a living legend.”1
Bernard E. Rollin, PhD, one of twelve distinguished professors at Colorado State University and professor of philosophy, animal rights, and biomedical science, has known Temple since the late 1970s. He met her when she took his veterinary medical ethics course, a required part of the veterinary curriculum at CSU since 1978.
“Temple has blossomed socially since I first knew her,” he said. “Then she was reluctant even to shake hands…. She’s a precise, demanding professor and a wonderful lecturer.”
He explained how she got the job at his university. “Right after she got her doctorate at Illinois, she called me and said, ‘I want a job as a professor at Colorado State.’”
Rollin explained that wasn’t the way it usually works. The university contacts candidates they’re interested in. Temple has never waited to be asked. She said, “I like Fort Collins. It’s a beautiful place. You’re there and I’m not worried about how much they pay me.” Those were the magic words. The university hired her to teach a few hours but worked her full-time.
“She’s been a good colleague,” said Rollin.
Right after Oliver Sacks’s book An Anthropologist on Mars came out, People magazine called Rollin and said, “Tell me some weird stories about Temple.” Rollin refused in no uncertain terms. “She’s my friend and, besides, I know a lot weirder people than Temple.”
Soon after the HBO movie about Temple was released, Rollin gathered a group of colleagues together. They went to the department head and said, “Temple needs tenure. It won’t look good if the public finds out she doesn’t have it.” The department head agreed, and Temple was given tenure.
Temple values highly the impact she has on students’ lives as a professor of animal science. “I’m a professor and scientist first,” she said. Autism is secondary.
Jamie, a CSU junior majoring in animal and equine sciences, said that Temple’s first lecture of the semester immediately helped her understand her horse better. “I now realize my horse isn’t stupid at times, just reacting to something in the environment.”
Stephanie, the instructor for a therapeutic riding class at Hearts and Horses in Loveland, Colorado, near Fort Collins, has also taken a class from Temple. “I loved Temple as a professor,” said Stephanie. “She told jokes.” Her class used Humane Livestock Handling, one of Temple’s books with Mark Deesing, as a textbook. Temple had them draw some of the designs from the book.
Although Temple knows they will eventually use AutoCAD, she wants each student to learn to draw by hand first. She says she gets “silly mistakes like a twenty-five-foot-long gate” from those who learn on the computer.
She gives them assignments to draw their own designs meeting certain requirements. She does this to prove that they don’t need a computer program to create a workable drawing. “I might get ten different drawings that all work,” said Temple.2
Cheryl Miller has worked as Temple’s administrative assistant for ten years at Colorado State University and several more when Temple hired her after Cheryl retired from CSU.
Cheryl said, “Temple is devoted to her students. She really cares about them and does lots for them. She’s identified more than one student with problems and worked with that learner individually.”
Temple’s methods may be unorthodox, but they work. She said, “If a student submits drawings that are full of wavy, squiggly lines instead of smooth arcs, I send them to the copy shop and tell them to photocopy pages from a book using paper in all the different pastel colors until they find the shade that helps them see better.”3
Temple uses the method discovered by Helen Irlen in 1980 to help them improve vision. She sends them to the drugstore to try on sunglasses of various colors. “I tell them, ‘Don’t buy what looks good. Buy what works.’”4
“One student with pink-tinted lenses came rushing up to me and said, ‘Oh, Dr. Grandin, I got an A on my economics quiz.’”5 That was because the PowerPoint slides stopped jiggling and she could read the numbers on the professor’s graphs. Temple’s insights, drawn from Helen Irlen’s ideas, about ways to improve visual acuity have proven to be valuable to students.
“I always tell my students it would be stupid to flunk out of school because you’re not using tan paper or because you didn’t make your computer background lavender,” Temple says.6 Or because you didn’t want to wear sunglasses with an unfashionable shade of pink.
If the student has out-of-state tuition and can’t afford it, Temple often pays for it from her speaking fees.
Temple teaches undergraduate courses. Undergraduates and candidates for a master’s or PhD are in the same classes. Those working on a graduate degree conduct research.
Temple maintains a limited number of graduate students and directs research that assists in developing systems for animal handling and the reduction of stress and losses at packing plants. She has published her research in the areas of cattle temperament, environmental enrichment of pigs, livestock behavior during handling, bull fertility, housing dairy cattle, and effective stunning methods for cattle and hogs.
I visited the Animal Science Building at CSU in the summer of 2012 to talk with Conny Flörcke, Temple’s research assistant at the time. She was on the second floor in a small cubicle with sixteen graduate students in the same room. Her desk
was near the printer.
“It gets very noisy when we’re all here,” Conny said. Since it was summer, not all the graduate students were on campus.
Cornelia Flörcke grew up near Hamelin, Germany, the town with the story about the Pied Piper, the children, and the rats. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology with its main focus on behavior and neuroscience.
She received her master’s in systems biology of the brain and behavior. During the last year of her studies, she attended the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO), the top research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), located in Wageningen, Netherlands.
“Temple Grandin” was a topic in one of her lectures at the institute. Conny was fascinated by what she heard about Temple’s animal behavior theories. She had always felt strongly about the livestock industry because her grandparents had a farm where she interacted with cows, pigs, and chickens, and she loved spending time with the animals.
“My grandpa was and is someone I will always look up to because he taught me so much about animal behavior and how to treat animals the right way,” said Conny.
Fascinated by what she heard from the lecture, Conny visited Temple’s website. She and Temple spoke on the phone in July 2009 and each talked about her research. Conny started thinking about pursuing her PhD at CSU.
Conny visited CSU and met Temple on two different days for lunch. It was important to Conny to meet Temple in person, because starting a PhD in a foreign country is difficult. She wanted to make sure she could connect with her supervisor. They bonded quickly, and Conny noticed that Temple was already introducing her to faculty members as her new graduate research assistant.
Conny came to Colorado State to earn her PhD under Temple Grandin. “It’s easy to do a dissertation under Temple,” Conny said. Temple travels constantly, but makes many phone calls to Conny, making sure she knows what to do next.
