This is me when I was young.
I haven’t changed much. I still have white hair and glasses.
I’m still cute. Or at least older.
I didn’t become interested in biological psych because I’m an albino but it certainly helps me personalize some of its topics.
My Calling
I’m Dr. Ken Tangen. And I love teaching.
I love making complicated processes straightforward and easy to remember.
I love reading everything I can find on a subject and making my head swim. I keep it all in my head until it makes sense to me. I know that eventually the floundering turns into dog-paddling, which turns into easy strokes. I endure chaos to find clarity.
Once it’s clear in my mind head and I don’t need any notes to remember it, I re-work it. I hunt for interconnections and ways to reduce the complexity. I want my presentations to be as simple as possible.
After clarity and simplification, the challenge becomes making it presentable. My slides in class are mostly photos and graphics. Very few words.
I put all my notes online. That’s why I built this site. It has all of the material underpinning my class lectures. You’ll find class notes, terms, outlines, videos, quizzes, and anything else I can think of to help you learn.
The Goal
The goal of this website is to help you understand biological psych.
I love it when my students do well. It’s their success but I’m proud to have been a part of the process. Learning is a team sport. We do it together.
What Now?
Start with how biological psych changed my life.
Then you can choose a topic of interest, such as genetics or schizophrenia.
A lesson is a collection of topics that go together, such as Lesson 1: Methods & Mates.
I highly recommend you buy a Study Guide. Preferably one I wrote! My study guides have graphics, videos, extra questions (and I explain why one answer is better than another). There is also a glossary for many of the terms included.
Have fun! Biological psych is about you, your friends and your family. We all know people have illnesses and disorders. You’ll learn to understand the complexity of these processes and how progress is made.
