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Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College (NEO) will host Dr. Temple Grandin as part of the NEO Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by the NEO Development Foundation and Fletcher Toyota of Joplin. On April 20, 2017 in the NEO Fine Arts Auditorium, Dr. Grandin will give her lecture titled “The World Needs All Kinds of Minds.” Doors will open at 6:00 p.m. and seating will be first come, first served for the 6:30 p.m. presentation. “Hosting Dr. Grandin is an exciting opportunity for the students and faculty of NEO,” said Dr. Jeff Hale, NEO president. “I appreciate the efforts of the NEO Foundation to bring nationally acclaimed educators to our campus and encourage the communities of northeast Oklahoma to join us on April 20.”

Dr. Grandin is one of the most accomplished and well-known adults with autism in the world. Her life, with all its challenges and successes, was brought to the screen with the HBO full-length film Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes. Dr. Grandin has been featured on NPR, and she gave a 2010 TED Lecture. She has also been featured on the BBC special “The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow”, ABC’s “Primetime Live”, “The Today Show,” and more. Grandin developed her talents into a successful career as a livestock-handling equipment designer, one of few in the world, and speaks on both autism and cattle handling.

Dr. Grandin’s current bestselling book on autism is The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s. She also authored Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships, Animals Make Us Human, Animals in Translation, Thinking in Pictures, and Emergence: Labeled Autistic. Grandin is considered a philosophical leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. Following her lecture, Dr. Grandin will host a book signing and copies of several of her books will be available for purchase. For more information on the event, contact Jennifer Walker at Jennifer.hessee@neo.edu or 918-540-6250.