Two from Yale included among country’s ‘300 Best Professors’

Two members of the Yale faculty —Paul Bracken and Karen von Kunes — are included in the Princeton Review’s new book “300 Best Professors.”

The book’s selections are based on reviews from RateMyProfessors.com. The book is designed to highlight “professors who have changed lives,” note the publishers.

Bracken, professor of management and political science, is described in the book as “very straightforward” and “approachable.” His section also notes: “In classes such as Problem Framing (an MBA core class that focuses on redefining hard problems) and Strategy, Technology, and War (which looks at sources of international order and disorder), he encourages students ‘to think beyond the usual stovepipes of academic disciplines.’ Very few professors cover these important topics, and he tries to give serious, real examples of the key points in the class, and emphasizes creativity and practicality. ‘They focus on opportunities rather than problems,’ he says

Von Kunes, senior lector in Slavic languages and literatures, “tries to inspire students to value knowledge above grades,” notes the book. It goes on to say: “She sees her role in the classroom as helping the students bridge the intellectual connections between that which they read outright, and that which they discover themselves. ‘My approach is to make students think, to see the invisible and discover the unknown, to making connection at the global level, to see patterns and similarities within one system (for instance, Czech language), [and] to project the theory of literature or film not only to the text or screen but also to real life and life experience,’ she says.”