{"id":137312,"date":"2022-02-03T12:37:49","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T19:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=137312"},"modified":"2022-02-03T12:38:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T19:38:02","slug":"employee-of-the-quarter-ellen-burkart-finds-her-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=137312","title":{"rendered":"Employee of the Quarter Ellen Burkart finds her voice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Ellen Burkart, Director of First Year Experience, was awarded the UCCS Employee of the Quarter award for winter 2022.
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When Ellen Burkart won her first Employee of the Quarter award<\/a> in 2017, it was for her \u201cfamilial approach\u201d as Director of First Year Experience and Parent Family Programs at UCCS. While she\u2019s continued to foster a supportive environment for colleagues and students, it\u2019s Burkart\u2019s innovative ideas for the office that have earned her the honor for a second time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI speak up a lot more than I used to,\u201d Burkart said. \u201cI have ideas, and in the past, sometimes I wouldn\u2019t speak up for fear of having those ideas rejected. But I\u2019m not holding back on those ideas anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the nominations for her second Employee of the Quarter award are any indication, her colleagues are more than happy that she\u2019s found her voice. Kimberly Guyer, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, noted in her nomination letter that she\u2019s impressed with Burkart\u2019s vision: \u201cEllen sees the big picture and often suggests solutions and ideas for initiatives that integrate student services and pulls teams together,” she writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That big-picture understanding is especially important for Burkart in her director role, where she\u2019s responsible for providing resources and support for students to help them achieve their academic goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do more than just work with first-year students,” Burkart said. “It goes beyond the first year for us. We\u2019ll meet with any student that needs that connection. It\u2019s providing information and meeting the student where they\u2019re at.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From developing outreach programs to connect with students with holds on their accounts to implementing software tools to more efficiently identify students in need of academic support, Burkart\u2019s big ideas are complemented by her commitment to the day-to-day effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a big undertaking, and it takes a lot of extra hours. My office is just an office of two professional staff and four student staff. We coordinate a lot, but we also have a lot of really good campus partners,\u201d Burkart said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t do what we do without the amazing people. And they\u2019re friends, they\u2019re not just colleagues. That makes it a little easier to call, and they say, ‘I\u2019ll do anything to help,’ just like we would for them and our students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That cooperation has been paramount during the COVID-19 pandemic, when academic schedules and operations have been in a constant state of flux. Burkart has learned that when it comes to keeping students in the loop, having candid conversations has been the most effective way to communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese students just want to trust people, and we don\u2019t want to break that trust. So if they ask a question, and I don\u2019t know, telling them I don\u2019t know. We\u2019re very upfront, and students seem more open to receiving information that way than trying to spin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when it comes to connecting with her colleagues during a pandemic, Burkart continues to keep the familial approach at the heart of her interactions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been really focused on maintaining and building relationships with my colleagues. It\u2019s not just a, ‘Hey, let\u2019s partner on this,’ but it\u2019s asking, ‘How are you doing?’ Because we\u2019re all people, and if we don\u2019t recognize that we\u2019re people first, then we can\u2019t do the things that we want to do when we\u2019re working together because we all want to feel valued, so that\u2019s something that\u2019s been really important to me, and I carry that forward with all my work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Employee of the Quarter Award<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Employee of the Quarter program is designed to promote and reward outstanding performance by staff at the university.\u00a0In recognition of her efforts for UCCS, Burkart will receive one day of administrative leave, a $100 stipend, three months of a free and reserved parking space when normal campus operations have resumed and a $40 voucher to the UCCS Bookstore. Congratulations, Ellen!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have a colleague whose extraordinary efforts at UCCS deserve to be recognized? Nominate them<\/a> for the Employee of the Quarter award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While she\u2019s continued to foster a supportive environment for colleagues and students, it\u2019s Burkart\u2019s innovative ideas for the office that have earned the Director of First Year Experience and Parent Family Programs at UCCS the honor for a second time.\u00a0\u00a0 (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":137318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,49,7,9],"tags":[331,328,375,368,319],"class_list":["post-137312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-campus-announcements","category-kudos","category-personnel","tag-campus-announcements","tag-office-of-first-year-experience","tag-staff-association","tag-student-affairs","tag-uccs-staff-association"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Communique-Featured-Image-1400-x-1052-px-double-size-14.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-zII","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137312"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137319,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137312\/revisions\/137319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/137318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}