Two annual awards for Daily Texan staff members have been created in honor of journalism professors at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Faculty Recognition Award is a cash award designed to honor the extraordinary efforts of outstanding faculty, and the awards go to Texan staffers who have made significant contributions working for The Daily Texan in spite of financial hardship.

This is made possible by award-winning photojournalists John McConnico of Texas and Jean-Marc Bouju of France, both former Daily Texan staffers and both Pulitzer Prize winners and members of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame, sponsored by Friends of The Daily Texan.

McConnico and Bouju created the McConnico-Bouju awards in 2020, and each year since have awarded two cash grants annually to Daily Texan staffers. This year they decided to rename the awards in honor of outstanding faculty members, naming them The School of Journalism and Media Faculty Recognition Awards.

Each year the awards will be presented to two Texan staffers in honor of two faculty members.

This year’s awards will be presented March 31 at the annual Friends of The Daily Texan dinner. Learn more here.

And register here to attend the event.

The awards are intended to encourage young people to choose careers in journalism to continue the Texan’s tradition of creating truth seekers and storytellers, just as the newspaper has since 1900.

The awards should go to the staff members who are in the most need and whose lives may change because of what they experienced at the newspaper. Students eligible for the Faculty Recognition Award can major in any degree-conferring college at the university.

FACULTY RECOGNIZED IN 2023:

J.B. Colson started an accredited program in photojournalism at The University of Texas. For over twenty years he headed the program with students at the Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. levels. Students of the program have won 13 Pulitzer Prizes. Professor Emeritus, School of Journalism and a fellow of The Center for American History at The University of Texas, he currently teaches a graduate course in the history and criticism of photography.

Dennis Darling taught photojournalism, social documentary and graphic design at UT since 1981. Darling has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art In-stitute of Chicago, and a Bachelors of Visual Arts from Georgia State University. During the last 30 years his work has appeared in numerous publications and has been exhibited nationally and internationally at more than 150 venues. He has published two books of his work: “Desperate Pleasures” and “Chameleon With Camera.”