Wonjung Jung

Wonjung Jung

Wonjung Jung was born and raised in Seoul, Korea.  She earned a M.F.A in Painting at the Seoul National University and a M.A in Design at Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan. She also earned another M.F.A. in Graphic Design at Radford University in Virginia.

Initially, Wonjung had planned on being a studio artist when she majored in painting at Seoul National University in Korea. However, after her first semester of teaching, she found that being an instructor was a very rewarding experience. Now she has taught art and design for over 15 years. It is always especially exciting for her to observe her students’ progress. Recently, she has been working as an adjunct faculty member at the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech and at New River Community College.

She has taught a wide range of art subjects; Drawing I & II, Introduction to Illustration, and Water Media at VT, and Graphic design and Art History at NRCC. She believes that this range of courses converge and interrelate with each other and often brings her fresh perspective and inspiration for both her teaching and her personal art. She has also published five children’s picture books.

Wonjung started as an adjunct faculty member at the School of Visual Arts at VT. Then she was invited by the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials to teach Design Fundamentals for Packaging. She has taught this class since 2018 and has also enjoyed developing other courses related to package design. Wonjung has a particular interest in creating packaging designs that are sustainable. She does not consider herself the expert of package design yet, but she says she is on a learning journey with her students.

She spends her usual day giving lectures in both the School of Visual Arts and the SBIO department and also giving her students’ design assignments. Her favorite part of the job is to observe her students’ growth throughout the semester. She enjoys watching their unique approaches to solving design problems.

In spring 2020, Wonjung set up a showcase of her recent students’ packaging design projects from SBIO 2214 Design Fundamentals for Packaging and SBIO 3104 Packaging Design Applications courses. These packaging designs were submitted by her students and many shown in this article’s image display the patterns they designed as well as the finished products. Wonjung thoroughly enjoys her students and was excited to share their work through a colorful display.

Wonjung is happily married with two kids. She told us that her dream job would be working as a movie director, if she were not so happy and satisfied working as an instructor at Virginia Tech. Wonjung’s favorite thing about Virginia Tech is the feeling of harmony between engineering and liberal arts. 

Her past awards include the Grand prize in the Children's Book Division of the annual event sponsored by The Korean Christian Publisher Association Seoul, Korea, 2011.   

Quote from a Colleague:

Wonjung Jung is a very crucial faculty member in the packaging program at Virginia Tech. Right after her employment, she immediately brought two new essential courses from scratch, which has enabled students to dream of design and develop their career in the broad area of packaging. With her tireless efforts, contributions, and devotion to students, the packaging program at Virginia Tech has been recognized as a complete and independent program in packaging science across the country. Thank you Wonjung for joining us and we are very happy to work with you! Young Teck Kim - Associate Professor, Sustainable Biomaterials