MSU Convocation features Educated scribe Tara Westover
From MSU News Service
Tickets are still available for Montana State University’s 2019 Convocation featuring Tara Westover. The author of Educated, the bestselling memoir about the redemptive power of education, will speak at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse on Thursday, August 22nd, at 7:30pm. While admission is free and open to the public, advance tickets are required for the event, which is held to celebrate MSU’s incoming freshman class. Tickets are available at the Bobcat Ticket Office, all TicketsWest outlets, and online at www.ticketswest.com.
Westover is a historian and writer known for her personal journey that is detailed in the memoir Educated. Born to survivalist parents who opposed public education, Westover grew up near Buck’s Peak in southeastern Idaho. She was not allowed to attend school, have a birth certificate or see a doctor. Yet she taught herself enough mathematics, grammar and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University when she was 16. She graduated magna cum laude from BYU in 2008 and won the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned a doctorate in history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University.
Educated has been at the top of many bestseller lists for more than a year including The New York Times’ list, where it has been on or near the top of the hardcover nonfiction list for more than 70 weeks. Educated has also won many awards, including being a finalist for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She recently was named to the Time 100 list of the most influential people of the year, nominated by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who wrote that “Educated isn’t a political book, but it touches on common divides in our country: red states vs. blue states, rural vs. urban, college-educated vs. not. Tara has a lot of smart things to say about overcoming those divides.”
MSU’s Convocation is the formal welcome of the incoming class, where the university focuses attention on the start of the academic, intellectual and personal journey of first-year students. Convocation demonstrates the support of the university and community to help students reach the goal of becoming the graduating class of 2023. Westover’s lecture will be part of MSU’s 14th convocation. •