David Brinkley Teaching Excellence Award

Permanent faculty members who have taught at the school for two or more years are eligible for nomination. The award may be won by the same person more than once, but members of the selection committee are not eligible to win the prize.

• Any faculty member or any student enrolled in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media may nominate a person or persons for the award. Self-nominations are allowed.
• Nominations are submitted electronically to the Committee Chair.
• The committee considers all nominations, and at its discretion, also may nominate a faculty member who has not been identified through the nomination process. Because of the wide range of class sizes, no special merit will be placed on the number of people nominating a faculty member.

Nominations are managed by a selection committee, consisting of winners of the prize from the most recent three years as well as one undergraduate student and one graduate student appointed by the Dean. The previous year’s winner serves as committee chair.

The committee forwards two finalists to the dean, who makes the final selection. The winner is announced at the school’s annual Faculty and Staff Awards program at the end of the spring semester.

The prize is named for David Brinkley, a Wilmington, N.C., native, who began his journalism career as a high school student writing for The Wilmington Star. He attended Vanderbilt University before service in the Army interrupted his studies. In 1943, Brinkley got his first full-time broadcasting job: White House correspondent for NBC News. From that auspicious beginning, he spent almost 40 years with NBC radio and television. Brinkley reported on every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. He had covered every presidential election and nominating convention since 1952 and had reported many of the major national news events. For most of the 1960s, he was co-anchor of “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” a popular network evening newscast. After Huntley retired, Brinkley remained at NBC as co-anchor with John Chancellor on the “NBC Nightly News” and later as a commentator for the program. He moved to ABC in 1981 as host of the Sunday morning interview program, “This Week with David Brinkley.” He retired as host of the show in 1996. Brinkley won every major broadcasting award, including 10 Emmy Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards and the Radio and Television News Directors Association’s “Paul White Award” for distinguished service to broadcast journalism. He was inducted into the NC Media & Journalism Hall of Fame in 1989. Brinkley passed away in 2003.

For more information, please contact Colin Stepien.