Grandin, Temple

Grandin's Academic Achievements

After high school, Grandin attended Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, where she received a bachelor's degree with honors in 1970. During her tenure at Franklin Pierce, medical professionals and school officials tried to discourage her from using a homemade squeeze chute device she had constructed to calm herself down. She was inspired by a cattle squeeze chute she had used at her aunt's ranch in Arizona as a teen, after seeing how much it calmed the livestock. After school officials confiscated the first device she made, Grandin responded to a professor's suggestion that she try to learn why the chute calmed her nerves by doing scientific research. An improved version of the original machine she designed has been used in many schools and treatment centers to help individuals with autism spectrum disorders reduce anxiety and improve concentration.

In the five years after her graduation from college, Grandin moved to Arizona, where she entered graduate school at Arizona State University, began working in the cattle industry, and later served as the livestock editor of the Arizona Farmer Ranchman. After seeing firsthand how cattle were slaughtered in the major meat-processing plants, she noticed that cattle, as with many autistic people, displayed extreme signs of stress and anxiety when they encountered particular visual and audio cues. As a result of this discovery, Grandin developed a new design for the chutes that put no stress on the animals as they were led to the slaughtering area. This discovery eased the process for workers in the plants, and is now used by almost half of the North American cattle processing industry.

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