Rose Marie Wanchupela
Founder, Executive Director, and Academic Director
A remarkable American woman arrived in Thailand in 1962 as a member of the first contingent of U.S. Peace Corps workers and was assigned to the Northeast area of the country to assist Thai teachers. Today Rose Marie Wanchupela is Executive Director of Rose Marie Academy (RMA) in Nonthaburi, a school she founded eleven years ago to offer educational opportunities to almost any student who sought a somewhat different, more personalized and individualized approach to classroom studies.
Mrs. Wanchupela’s compassion rests on a strong set of values. To put it simply, she insists on honesty, responsibility, civility, and a respect for Thai culture and traditions from those around her.
Graduated from Syracuse University in New York State prior to first arriving in Thailand, she proceeded from her posts teaching at teachers’ colleges in Songkla and Khorat in the Northeast to help found the English Department at Bangkok University, and later taught at International School Bangkok (ISB) for eleven years.
In the early 1990s, Mrs. Wanchupela began a nursery school in the Muang Thong Thani area. Since 1998 a full schedule of classes has been offered. Starting that same year, a full four-year high school program in cooperation with Keystone High School in Pennsylvania, USA, has been available, leading to a high school diploma for those successfully completing the American curriculum course at RMA.
Wanchai Chaiyasit
Deputy Executive Director
Wanchai Chaiyasit is one of the few licensed psychologists in Thailand, and Rose Marie Academy proudly counts him among its professional staff. With expertise gained from long experience as well as from training, he is not only “second in command” as the school’s Deputy Executive Director, but its counseling director as well.
He handles the Academy’s admissions process, administers placement testing, and is available for student and parent counseling. With infinite patience and understanding along with strength of purpose gained from his training and experience, Wanchai helps youngsters and their parents through encountered issues on the road to academic success and personal achievement.
Born in Northeast Thailand the youngest of six children, he attended high school in Texas, USA, under the American Field Service International Scholarship Program. He was graduated from Chiangmai University with a bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology and entered his professional field with the Child Mental Health Center in Bangkok. He later returned to the United States to earn his master’s degree in counseling at the University of Northern Colorado. He was a special lecturer for undergraduates at Thammasat, Kasetsart, and Chiangmai Universities and over a twelve-year period carried out collaborative research studying emotional and behavioral problems of Thai and American children. In 1996 he was named Director of the Mental Health Promotion Division of the Department of Mental Health, Ministry of Public Health and two years later joined Rose Marie Academy.
