news at welch college   Welch College in Gallatin, Tennessee, has been the official college of the Free Will Baptist Denomination since 1942. To find out more information about the school, visit www.Welch.edu.

Welch College Press Publishes The Apologetics of Leroy Forlines

Welch College Press released a new publication this summer, The Apologetics of Leroy Forlines, by F. Leroy Forlines and J. Matthew Pinson, according to managing editor Matthew Bracey.

“The book debuted at the national convention with much enthusiasm and praise,” Bracey said. “We’re proud of this book and believe it honors the legacy Mr. Forlines has left to us on the topics of apologetics and worldview thinking.”

As detailed on the book’s dust jacket, “In The Apologetics of Leroy Forlines, J. Matthew Pinson brings together select writings of F. Leroy Forlines on apologetics and the knowledge of God. He begins the volume with a lengthy essay on the apologetics of the foremost systematic theologian of the modern Free Will Baptist Church and the contemporary
Reformed Arminian movement.”

“The ideas in this book are timely,” Forlines said. “My prayer is that God will add His blessing to this book, using it to extend His Kingdom and give Him the glory that is due His name alone.”

Apologetics is the fourth publication from Welch College Press. Previous publications include:
J. Matthew Pinson, Matthew Steven Bracey, Matthew McAffee, and Michael Oliver, Sexuality, Gender, and the Church: A Christian Response to the New Cultural Landscape; Christopher Talbot, Remodeling Youth Ministry: A Biblical Blueprint for Ministering to Students; and Phillip T. Morgan and J. Matthew Pinson, Light and Truth: A Seventy-fifth Anniversary Pictorial History of Welch College.

To purchase any of these titles, visit welch.edu/welchpress.

Leadership Transition Announced in Education Department

Welch College has initiated a leadership transition in the Department of Teacher Education, according to Provost Dr. Matthew McAffee. Stephen Beck has been named associate undergraduate dean and will assume more responsibility in overseeing students in teacher education, effective immediately.

In this role, Mr. Beck will work alongside Undergraduate Dean Dr. Etta Patterson. He will be responsible for mentoring secondary and middle school teacher candidates, managing student teacher placements, and overseeing student admissions into the program. Dr. Patterson will continue to work with education faculty and staff and provide overall leadership for the department during a year-long transition period, after which Mr. Beck will become undergraduate dean.

“We are excited to have Mr. Beck take on a more prominent role in leading teacher education at Welch College,” said Matthew McAffee. “His experience as principal in a cross-cultural setting uniquely qualifies him for the task. Our intent when we hired him was for him to assume the position of undergraduate dean when he completed his Ed.D. Now that he is nearing the completion of that degree, the time is right for Mr. Beck to assume greater responsibility in departmental leadership.”

Mr. Beck recently earned an Ed.S. from Union University and is set to complete the Ed.D. at Union in the spring of 2020. Mr. Beck came to Welch in 2016 after serving nine years as principal of Free Will Baptist Christian School in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Since coming to Welch, Mr. Beck has been teaching both education and math courses and has led the department in gaining state approval for a new bachelor’s degree in mathematics education.

“As enrollment in the Teacher Education Department increases, we must adapt to the needs of teacher candidates and respond to Tennessee Department of Education mandates,” says Dr. Patterson. “I welcome Mr. Stephen Beck to this role. He has continued to grow as an educational leader and will assume additional departmental and administrative duties.”

For more information about teacher education at Welch, please contact Etta Patterson at 615-675-5310 or epatterson@welch.edu.

Welch College Named 16th Best Regional College in the South

Welch College ranks 16th among “Regional Colleges South” in U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 edition of America’s Best Colleges rankings, according to Welch president Matt Pinson.

The “Best Regional Colleges” category where Welch is ranked includes 273 institutions that focus on undergraduate education and offer a range of degree programs in traditional liberal arts as well as in professional fields such as business, nursing, and education. Colleges in this category are ranked within four geographic regions: North, South, Midwest, and West.

U.S. News rankings offer opportunities to judge the relative quality of institutions based on widely accepted indicators of excellence: peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and more.

“We are delighted about this high ranking in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges,” Pinson said. “It shows our quality to prospective students and their parents, as well as to alumni and supporters. It shows academic excellence can coexist with a strong commitment to Christian faith and life as the center of the Welch College experience.”

“The first time we were ranked in this publication, back in 2010, we ranked 54th,” Pinson observed. “And even that was in the top half of all the Southern schools ranked in the Best Regional Colleges category. So in ten years we’ve gone from 54th to our ranking of 16th for 2020. To put this in perspective, the next ten colleges in the list that Welch outranked had an average enrollment more than five times our enrollment and an average endowment almost nine times our endowment.”

Welch received especially high marks in five strategic areas. Compared to the other 123 institutions in the Regional Colleges South category, Welch ranked:

• #1 in faculty-student ratio
  

• #3 in the percentage of classes under 20 students
  

• #4 in students who were in the top 25% of their high school graduating class
  

• #5 in first-year student retention rate
  

• #10 in alumni giving rate
  

Welch Provost Matthew McAffee said, “We are grateful to have this evaluative benchmark for our institution. It provides us with an external measurement that helps us evaluate our quality as an institution of higher learning. Our faculty and staff are to be commended for their effort in helping us attain this level of excellence.”

More information is available about the rankings and methodology in the annual America’s Best Colleges guidebook at: www.usnews.com/collegemeth. For more information about Welch,visit www.welch.edu.