Himmelright Associate Professor of Economics Kathy Krynski is not an ivory-tower theorist. For her, economics is about solving real-life problems. Together with her husband, David Harrington, with whom she shares the Himmelright professorship, Krynski has researched and written extensively about the effects of varying state regulations on funeral markets and Vietnamese-immigrant manicurists--coffins and nails.

"Economic models are powerful and useful, but to me they're not ends in themselves," Krynski says. "Economic models help us to devise good policies. Unless we ask the right questions, we're never going to come up with the right policies.

Her predilection for applied economics is consistent with what she calls the "flavor" of the economics department at Kenyon, which emphasizes public-policy applications over business applications. In recent decades, many economics departments nationally have veered toward the pre-professional or the theoretical.

Krynski's preference for the hands-on also permeates her teaching, and that of her colleagues. "What we like to do in our teaching is to have a combination of an interesting policy question, some data analysis to support it, and some basic theory. That's how our economics program works," Krynski explains. "My goal is to help students become better writers, better thinkers, and better economic analysts, perhaps in that order.