Odyssey Team

Kate Spies, Visiting Odyssey Project Academic Advisor and Student Support Coordinator, is a social worker and adult education professional who most recently worked as an adult education advisor at Parkland College prior to joining HRI. A University of Illinois alum, she holds a BA in English and a Master’s of Social Work. Kate worked in the Champaign-Urbana nonprofit world for 10 years, including time with Perinatal Connect Women’s Mental Health Coalition, YWCA, Carle’s Healthy Beginnings home visiting program, Sistering CU, and The GOALS Project. She enjoys helping people connect with themselves and each other.

Dana Kinzy is lead professor with the Odyssey Project. Dana grew up a literal coal-miner’s daughter in rural and small-town Appalachia, where she developed an early appreciation for well-told stories, an eclectic curiosity about people, and a streak of independent mindedness. These qualities fueled her pursuit of a bachelor’s degree as a first-generation student at Marshall University, and they continue to influence her scholarly writing, creative work, and—most importantly to her—her teaching. The love of teaching and learning led her to complete both an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry at West Virginia University and a PhD in English with an emphasis in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prior to relocating to Champaign, Dana advised and taught TRiO students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in 2016 and served as Associate Director of Rhetoric for eight years. She currently teaches for the Odyssey Project, directs the Program in Professional Writing, and teaches in the English Department. Dana’s scholarship focuses on the role of narrative in student and teacher identity formation, on classroom practices built on such narratives, and on the ways in which disruptive narratives connect to social justice.