Dr. Rachel Davis Mersey, recently appointed Dean of Moody College of Communication, will be the featured speaker at the 11th annual Friends of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame gathering on the University of Texas campus on March 22. Mersey served as Interim Dean for 7 months and was appointed Dean in January 2024. The March 22 gathering will begin at 5 p.m. with an outdoor reception on the Walter Cronkite Plaza, located between the Texas Student Media building and the Moody College of Communication complex. There will be a variety of food and beverage stations. Also beginning at 5 […]
Read more →Rachel Davis Mersey has been appointed dean of Moody College of Communication, replacing Dr. Jay Bernhardt who resigned to become president of Emerson College. Mersey has served as Interim Dean since Bernhardt’s departure 7 months ago. “The Moody College of Communication is in the strongest place it has been in its history, and I am honored to be selected to serve as the next dean, charged with leading us to new heights,” Mersey said. “I want to thank President Jay Hartzell and Provost Sharon Wood for their confidence in me. Thank you, too, to the search committee, led by Senior […]
Read more →Last call for 2023 donations to the Friends of The Daily Texan Endowment campaign to fund scholarships for Texan student journalists. The campaign to raise $300,000 for permanent funding for 13 annual scholarships is nearing its goal, and every donation – $25, $250 or more – is important in reaching that goal. The Friends of The Daily Texan is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and your donation may be tax deductible. If the goal is met, all 13 grants to be awarded next year will be guaranteed permanent funding via the Friends of The Daily Texan endowment, plus other endowment partners and […]
Read more →A $60,000 grant to provide financial support to photojournalists at The Daily Texan at the University of Texas at Austin has been established by the Tejemos Foundation, founded by Austin residents Lynne Dobson and Greg Wooldridge. The funding will establish a $50,000 endowment to provide an annual grant to a photojournalist working at The Daily Texan, and an additional $10,000 for immediate needs. Dobson, who moved to Austin in the 1970s, worked as a photographer at The Daily Texan. A graduate of UT-Austin in 1979, she had a 25-year career as an award-winning photojournalist for newspapers in Ohio, California and […]
Read more →When you support scholarships for Daily Texan staff members by donating to the Friends of The Daily Texan, Inc. endowment, who receives the money and where are they now, after graduation? Read below – in their own words – about 4 former Texan staffers who are examples of the importance of those grants that you help support. One student former student calls it “a lifesaver” for him and his family; another says, “I couldn’t be more grateful for the investment in my career and studies.” Since the Friends group’s first grant of $1,500 to one student in 2018, $41,750 has […]
Read more →Veteran Austin American-Statesman columnist and sports editor Kirk Bohls and his wife Vicki have endowed a permanent grant to fund an annual scholarship for a Daily Texan sports journalist. Kirk and Vicki’s $50,000 donation will fully endow a new annual scholarship, and comes as the Friends of The Daily Texan, Inc. work this year to raise funds to fund for long-term availability all 13 grants that will be awarded next year. The $2,500 award will be presented each year at the Friends of The Daily Texan Hall of Fame dinner and will recognize the achievements of a sports-focused staff member […]
Read more →Gerald A. Johnson, director of Texas Student Media for the past 9 years, has accepted a new position at UT-Austin, but will still retain involvement in Texas Student Media, while adding additional duties for Moody College of Communication. Johnson has assumed the role of Executive Director for Program and Center Innovation and Partnership for the Moody College of Communication. TSM will continue to be one of his responsibilities and he is in the process of looking for a successor in his TSM role. Under Johnson’s leadership, The Daily Texan and TSM are expected to record its 9th consecutive annual profit […]
Read more →By Sofia Vargas Karam / The Drag Audio Robert Quigley had a job opportunity – so he called up a long-time friend to get her advice. He met Katey Psencik Outka on a warm early October day in 2020 at Radio Coffee in South Austin. They sat on the patio to do what they had been doing for years – bounce ideas off each other. In 2012 and 2013, Outka had taken Quigley’s classes at the University of Texas when she was a journalism student, and they had remained friends after she graduated. During their coffee, Quigley told her […]
Read more →Rachel Davis Mersey has been appointed Interim Dean of the Moody College of Communication. She has served as Associate Dean for Research at Moody College and held the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Professorship in the School of Journalism and Media since 2020. In addition to her teaching, research, and leadership roles at UT, Dr. Mersey has spent the last two years collaborating with Meta to build the company’s platform for research partnerships. Dr. Mersey replaces Dr Jay Bernhardt who will serve as the next President of Emerson College. With experience as a professional journalist at the Arizona Republic and azcentral.com […]
Read more →By Jonathan Malesic Mr. Malesic teaches writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. April 7, 2023 In the debate over free speech and social justice, commentators on the right and the “heterodox” left often claim that college students are all either stridently liberal or cowed into silence by those who are. As someone who has spent two decades teaching at colleges large and small, public and private, I don’t recognize this description — and it’s not because I think that it’s conservative students who are dominating the discourse. In my experience, college students are all too reluctant to express strong […]
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