At GBC, Poetry Meets Professional Communication  

At Goldey-Beacom College, students learn from faculty members whose expertise extends far beyond the classroom. Dana Kinsey is one example: a GBC faculty member, career coach, professional writer, teaching artist, commissioned poet, and Lancaster City Poet Laureate. Her work brings together poetry, performance, intercultural communication, and career readiness in a way that reflects the depth and range of GBC’s faculty community.  

Kinsey teaches communication courses at GBC, including Group Dynamics and Intercultural Communications, with Professional Communication courses planned for the coming academic year. But her path to the classroom is shaped by much more than traditional teaching experience. She is a longtime English teacher with a background in creative writing, literature, British literature, and theater. She has started theater programs, taught performance, coached interviews, and helped writers find their voices. 

That blend of experiences gives her students something distinctive: a classroom where communication is not just a skill to be studied, but something to be practiced, performed, and lived.

Poetry as a Way to Connect 

For Kinsey, poetry is more than written expression. It is a way to bring people together.

She shared how her connection to GBC began through a friendship and creative collaborations with Dr. Tracy Curry. That creative connection eventually led to Kinsey teaching at the College, where she quickly found ways to connect her artistic background with GBC’s hands-on approach to learning. 

One of her favorite moments came during an event at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington called Ghost in the Machine. Kinsey’s students worked in groups to write poetry about their relationship with artificial intelligence: whether they loved it, questioned it, resisted it, or saw it as something more complicated. They chose metaphors, wrote collaboratively, and then some students performed their work as featured poets in the museum.  For many students, that meant taking what they created in class and presenting it in a real public setting. It was poetry, but it was also experiential learning. It asked students to think critically, collaborate, communicate, and trust their own voices. 

A Faculty Member with a Life in the Arts 

Kinsey’s work as Lancaster City Poet Laureate has been one of the highlights of her life. The role is a two-year commitment through the mayor’s office and includes writing poetry for civic events, teaching in schools and community spaces, and creating a keynote project. 

Her project, the Lancaster Living Poetry Museum, turns poetry into performance. Participants choose a poet, research that person’s life and work, and then become that poet in a multimedia one-person show. The event has included poets and cultural figures ranging from Langston Hughes and Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Muhammad Ali, Amelia Earhart, and Kendrick Lamar. 

This year, Kinsey is also performing. She will portray Edna St. Vincent Millay, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Broadway performer, and public voice who used her art to speak about democracy and world events during the Depression era and World War II. 

That kind of work matters in the classroom because Kinsey is not only teaching communication as a concept. She is actively practicing it through writing, performance, public art, civic engagement, and storytelling. 

Helping Students Find Their Voice 

Kinsey sees poetry as “a heightened form of communication.” The same qualities that make spoken word memorable — presence, clarity, emotion, confidence, and connection — are also valuable in presentations, interviews, leadership, and professional settings. 

As a career coach, she helps people prepare resumes, optimize LinkedIn profiles, and strengthen their interview skills. As a teacher, she brings that same attention to voice and confidence into the classroom.  She has seen many students begin by filling presentation slides with text and reading from the screen. Over time, she encourages them to trust what they know, use fewer notes, and speak more naturally. The goal is not perfection. It is confidence. 

That confidence matters long after a class ends. Students who can communicate clearly, think on their feet, and share their ideas authentically are better prepared for interviews, teamwork, leadership, and the professional world. 

A Classroom That Stays Open 

Kinsey’s philosophy of teaching is rooted in connection. She wants students to know that once they are in her classroom, they are always part of her classroom. 

She enjoys working with students one-on-one on editing, presentations, research ideas, literature, films, and other creative or academic projects. She also sees students as people who teach her in return, especially through their cultures, communication styles, and life experiences. That perspective reflects something important about GBC: students are not only learning from textbooks. They are learning from faculty members with rich professional lives, creative passions, and a commitment to helping students grow as people. 

At GBC, a communication course might include poetry. A poetry assignment might become a public performance. A professor might also be a poet laureate, career coach, theater teacher, and mentor. And a student who begins the semester hesitant to speak might leave with a stronger voice — and the confidence to use it. 

Watch the episode here!