Faculty Council Communications Committee
Senior Instructor, Communication Department, LAS

Liesl Eberhardt, FC Communications Committee Member

What does shared governance mean to you? Why is it important?

I have been an IRC Faculty member in the Department of Communication at UCCS since 2001 and I teach various leadership communication courses in the Professional Communication Track. I primarily think of shared governance in its application as an invaluable mechanism for informing and implementing meaningful institutional change. Teaching leadership from a communication perspective, I believe extraordinary leadership is a process of extraordinary communication. In times of great change I am acutely aware of the importance of shared representative voices from a variety of organizational layers in a system’s hierarchy to inform policy and leadership. Accurately assessing a culture and its climate in order to prioritize where change is needed and properly facilitate its implementation is vital to ongoing institutional health. 

Tell us about your role on the Faculty Council, how long you have served in this role, and what your initial motivations were for engaging in this type of service.

I was invited to join the Faculty Council Communications Committee (FC3) in November of 2021. I am one of the newer members of the team and still have a lot to learn from my peers across the system. My role was to bring an IRC perspective to our internal conversations regarding the external messaging that would be beneficial for various system-wide faculty communications. 

What makes this work rewarding? Can you share some of your committee’s or the Council’s initiatives or achievements that you are particularly proud to have contributed to? 

The work on this committee is especially rewarding for me to some extent because my previous committee service has been at the department and campus-level. Since this is a system-wide committee, it has enabled me to connect on a broader level. As an instructional faculty member, I tend to focus quite heavily and take great pride in my teaching and course design, especially with various challenges presented with increased remote learning. With so much of my work done individually, it has been good for me to engage in a collaborative process with colleagues that encourages shared thoughts and perspectives toward a common goal.