Faculty

• Robert Atwood

  

  Robert Atwood is currently Executive Vice President, Current Series & Digital Media at Legendary TV Studios – working on TV adaptations of Godzilla and Dune as well as overseeing Animation for the studio. He has also produced Carnival Row, Paper Girls, and Night Sky for the studio. Previously he was Head of Development & Production for Fazekas & Butters – a production company for ABC Studios. He started his career in television at Brillstein Entertainment Partners before working at Viacom. He is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Film program – completing his studies at the Semester in LA Program in 2004. He has been teaching at Semester in LA since 2022.

• Dirk Blackman
  
• Kevin Cooper

  In September 2024, Kevin took on the role of Associate Director and Head of Semester in L.A. at Columbia College Chicago. In addition to teaching and mentoring young filmmakers, he remains an active film producer, director and cinema-lover. In February 2024, he produced the rural noir feature Good Guy with a Gun, featuring actors David Pasquesi, Joe Swanberg, Tiffany Bedwell, and Ian Barford from Steppenwolf, which was distributed by Byron Allen’s Freestyle Media. Currently, Kevin is adapting his award-winning Ukrainian short film Plus into a feature film with funding from the Black Sea Trust Fund, set to be filmed in Lviv later in 2025. He was recently hired by Amir Mohabbat to direct and produce an untitled thriller, scheduled to shoot in Los Angeles. Additionally, Kevin is developing the sci-fi feature To the End, produced by John Condne’s Take Care Productions.

  Kevin began his career at Creative Artists Agency before moving to Bay Films, where he worked as a Creative Executive for director Michael Bay. He contributed to the development of Armageddon alongside notable talents like J.J. Abrams, Tony Gilroy, and Shane Salerno. Following this, he joined Fox 2000 as a Creative Executive under the guidance of legendary producer and studio president Laura Ziskin, working on films such as Men of Honor, Fight Club, and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. Later, Kevin led Development for the Oscar-winning company Digital Domain, founded by Scott Ross, James Cameron, and Stan Winston. During his time at Digital Domain, he served as Executive Producer on New Line Cinema’s Secondhand Lions, starring Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and Haley Joel Osment. Kevin holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Creative Producing from UCLA.

• Rona Edwards

  

  Rona Edwards was Vice President of Creative Affairs for John Larroquette, Academy Award-winner Michael Phillips, and Emmy-winning Producer Fern Field before becoming an independent producer. Her producing credits include: Killer Hair, Hostile Makeover, Blind Trust (Lifetime), One Special Victory (NBC), The Companion (USA/SyFi), I Know What You Did (ABC), Out Of Sync (VH1), and Der Morder Meiner Mutter (Sat.1). Documentaries include: Selling Sex in Heaven (CBC), Selling Sex (Ralston Ltd) and Unforgettable (PBS). She has had projects made or in development with CBS, ABC, NBC, HBO, Phoenix, Edward R. Pressman, USA Network, SyFi Channel, Warner Bros., and David Wolper. When she isn’t developing projects in television, feature film, and transmedia, Rona writes for various publications/newspapers including Produced By and Script magazine, and co-wrote the bestselling books, I Liked It, Didn’t Love It: Screenplay Development From The Inside Out!, and The Complete Filmmakers Guide to Film Festivals.

• Trischa Gamus

  
   

  Trischa is a creative marketer, storyteller, and vision-driven leader with 15 years of professional experience spanning Streaming, Film, Television, and Music. Trischa currently works in Social Media Marketing at Spotify and previously held positions at Universal, Amazon 20th Century Studios, Fox Broadcasting, Live Nation, and The Walt Disney Company. She served as a lead change-maker in entertainment leading the development and execution of digital campaigns for award-winning television and film titles including Sing 2, Bohemian Rhapsody, Love Simon, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Bones, The Wilds and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.

• Troy Takaki

  

  Takaki moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to pursue his filmmaking career after graduating with a degree in cinema from San Francisco State University. Starting in television, he worked on such hit series as “Desperate Housewives,” “Ally McBeal,” and “Tales from the Crypt” Troy Takaki has cut such box office hits as “Sweet Home Alabama,” “The Bounty Hunter,” “Fool’s Gold,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” and “Hitch.” Takaki is one of the few picture editors that splits his time between features and television. He recently edited shows such as “YOU” and “Mr. Mercedes”, and the movie “Cheaper by the Dozen.” He is currently working on the series “Dead Boy Detectives” for HBO MAX. In addition to editing, Takaki has also been active in the ACE internship program since 2003. He founded the ACE Diversity Mentorship Program in 2015, its mission statement being, “To help mentor young editors with the goal of them being ACE members one day and to create a more diverse editing community that includes members of traditionally underrepresented groups.” Takaki is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches the class “Career Planning Post-Production”

• Jon Vandergriff

  

  JON VANDERGRIFF received his MFA in Screenwriting at the University of Southern California and immediately segued into professional sitcom writing with his debut freelance script for the ABC hit show, Coach. That was followed by a six-year stint on the even bigger ABC hit, Home Improvement, where he rose from Staff Writer to Supervising Producer. He attained the title of Co-Executive Producer on the popular WB show, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Along the way, Jon wrote sitcom pilots for NBC and The WB and has also had two screenplays optioned by Hollywood-based production companies. A life-long lover of board games, Jon is also a board game inventor who has had three games published, including Anger Management, and A Way With Words.
• Vance Van Petten

  

  Vance Van Petten is the National Executive Director/COO of the Producers Guild of America, representing producers of motion pictures and programming for television and new media. Prior to leading the PGA, Van Petten was Executive Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Universal TV, Twentieth Century Fox Television, and Paramount TV. Van Petten started his career as an associate in the entertainment law firm of Irwin & Rowan representing producers, actors, comics, and comedy groups such as The Groundlings. Van Petten simultaneously earned Juris Doctorate and Master of Public Administration degrees from the University of Southern California. He received his B.A. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles with Phi Beta Kappa distinction. Van Petten has written and lectured extensively for various educational institutions and professional organizations, and has led workshops on negotiating for producers. Van Petten’s book, Ten Minutes to the Speech, was published in 2007.

• Rosanne Welch

  

  Rosanne Welch, Phd, is Executive Director of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting. Her writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2018 Welch edited When Women Wrote Hollywood, a collection of essays of famous female screenwriters, which was named runner up for the Susan Koppelman Award for the best anthology, multi-authored, or edited book in feminist studies by the Popular Culture Association. That same year she co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia (named to both the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List and to the list of Best Historical Materials, by the American Library Association.) She has written several popular culture books including: Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Popular Culture; The Civil War on Film; American Women’s History of Film and contributed chapters to Doctor Who: New Dawn:  Essays on the Jodie Whittaker Era; and Handbook of Screenwriting Studies.  Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP which can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JFNsqKBRnA.