VMA Profs Gaucher and Pak Awarded Whiting Foundation Fellowships

Two Emerson College Visual and Media Arts faculty were awarded Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation fellowships, funding their travel for research that will directly enhance their courses and student instruction.

Professor Daniel Gaucher and Assistant Professor Jong Ougie Pak will create innovative curricula and augment current courses with the goal of enriching their students’ learning.

The Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation provides travel fellowships to New England university and college professors to study abroad and improve and enhance the quality of their instruction. This year, the foundation awarded 44 fellowships.

Gaucher, who is also Director of Emerson’s Global Bachelor of Fine Arts program, will travel to Italy and Spain to visit European museums and institutions to study the different fine art techniques that were later adopted by motion arts and film. His research will shape the intensive introductory-level VMA production class Fine Art to Film.

Pak will travel to South Korea to study film production and film education practices. South Korea, whose TV shows like Squid Game and films such as Parasite have been making waves for at least two decades, has unique systems and methods of screenwriting, film production and film instruction. Pak’s research will inform his VMA filmmaking and topics courses.

Since 2013, the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation has awarded fellowships to 13 Emerson faculty. This year’s Emerson fellows received approximately $6,000 in travel funding each.

Recent past recipients of Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation fellowships also include Alden Jones, senior affiliated faculty in Writing, Literature & Publishing who traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia, and Lu Ann Reeb, Senior Executive-in-Residence, Assistant Dean and Director of Business and Entrepreneurial Studies, who traveled to the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change in Austria.