(image by Walt Moore from 1986, when I graduated from high school)

Here's a real picture.

Dr. Doug Ingram

Big news since September 1997: We have a dog!

I'm an Instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas Christian University (no, it isn't a bible college or anything...it's very "normal"), located in Fort Worth, Texas. I currently teach a variety of classes, including introductory Astronomy and Physics classes, and I maintain an archive of educational resources for undergraduate education in these fields.

I'm 30 years old (born May 27, 1968). I grew up in Denton, Texas and went to high school there (class of 1986). I did my undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin (where I spent two years suffering with and finding some of my best friends for life on Jester's infamous 11th floor) before moving to Seattle, Washington in 1990. Summers in Seattle are absolutely wonderful (16 hour sunny days, 80 degrees is the hottest it gets), but it is generally drizzly, blustery and awful for the other 8 months. So it doesn't rain there all the time... Seattle residents simply tell other people that urban legend to keep them from moving to Seattle. I got my PhD from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington in August 1996.

My career is devoted to science education and to Astronomy, and I'm always striving to be a better teacher. I'm also hopelessly addicted to anything with an ethernet connection. On the net, my main hobbies are writing book reviews, maintaining The Personality Index, and keeping my own educational sites up to date. Outside the net, I do a lot of reading, I collect baseball cards sporadically, and I try to keep up with my wife, Najet. Najet graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Studio Art in 1991, and she also has a degree in Culinary Arts from Seattle Central Community College. She is an accomplished artist and chef, currently working toward an advanced degree is Psychology.

I'm a big baseball fan (mainly rooting for the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers), but I also grew up watching the Dallas Cowboys and so am a hopeless football fan as well. In my grad school days, I played a lot of Ultimate Frisbee, but these days, my frisbee-related activities are pretty much limited to the occasional round of disk golf and a very sporadic game or two on the campus of TCU. My musical tastes are almost strictly limited to the 80's (Phil Collins, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Billy Joel, Sting, Wang Chung, etc), but I also occasionally listen to the great a capella group known as "The Nylons", and I'm a big soundtrack fan (The Breakfast Club, Blade Runner - Vangelis, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars trilogy, To Live and Die in LA, etc.).

If you really want to see what makes me tick, you must have QUITE a bit of time on your hands. If that's the case, have I got a site for you. Go check out your Personality Type by taking the Keirsey-Bates Temperament Sorter test. I fit the INFJ personality remarkably well. You can then send me your entry for The Personality Index.

Contact me at d.ingram@tcu.edu

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