BIOS H-M

BIOGRAPHIES: Liz Mathis

Liz Mathis earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1980 with a double major in journalism and mass communication and broadcasting and film as well as a minor in political science. Later, she would do postgraduate work at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

Mathis entered into the profession of broadcasting still in her college years, at WMT-Radio and WMT-TV (now KGAN-TV) in Cedar Rapids and KXIC-Radio in Iowa City.

Spending over half of her nearly 30-year career in broadcasting at KWWL-TV, she became the station’s executive producer and their first female co-anchor.

From there, Mathis chaired Wartburg College’s communication arts department, where she taught First Amendment law classes and broadcast journalism. She would be named to Wartburg’s Board of Regents in 2006.

Coming back to broadcasting, Mathis co-anchored the five and six o’clock evening news at KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, from 1998 until her retirement nine years later. There, she also held the position of newsroom internship coordinator, working with students from area colleges.

In 2007, Mathis announced she would be leaving broadcast journalism to begin a new challenge in her career. Motivated by discussions with her father before his death, she became the vice president of community relations with the Cedar Rapids human services agency, Horizons, A Family Service Alliance.

Mathis also served as an adjunct faculty member at UI and currently serves as President of the Journalism-Mass Communication Professional Advisory Board there.

Sources: kwwl.com and uiowa.edu