Milestones at Welch College

By J. Matthew Pinson

It is an exciting time for Welch College as we celebrate our highest enrollment in 36 years. We’re making great strides as we ratchet up our excellence in fulfilling our Christ-centered mission while continuing to grow in terms of enrollment and financial stability.

Welch College remains centered on the mission to which God called us 77 years ago. Our Kingdom-purpose drives our faculty, staff, and Board of Trustees as we craft a Christian community of faith and learning built on the Word of God and the tradition we have received. This community is moving boldly into the future, into the greatest era of mission fulfillment in our history. Our mission is to educate leaders to serve Christ, His church, and His world through biblical thought and life, with a strong commitment to preparing ministers and missionaries who highly value Free Will Baptist faith and practice. God is sending us more students whose vision for His mission in the world is being transformed by what they receive at Welch.

This is exemplified by the testimony one of our graduating seniors gave at commencement earlier this year. Her name is Keren Delgado, and she was born in Cuba. Her parents were converted under the ministry of pioneer missionaries Pop and Mom Willey. She received generous scholarships from WNAC and the Do Unto Others Trust founded by Justino Celorio and his wife Alicia, who were discipled by the Willeys. Keren will take what she learned at Welch to the Free Will Baptist mission field, spending her life spreading the good news of Christ. Keren said:

Thank you, God. And thank you, Welch faculty and staff, for being obedient to God’s mission for your lives. Thank you to all the people who faithfully give to Welch. Thank you to the ladies of WNAC. Thank you to Alicia Celorio and the Do Unto Others Trust. Thank you to the churches that gave so that I could not just get a degree, but receive eternal treasures such as sound doctrine, spiritual growth, and a loving community at Welch College. Thank you to the student body for being the community God provided these four years for me….

I learned at Welch that God is faithful, and He will continue, now that I am graduating and going to serve as a missionary to Bulgaria, to provide my needs—healing, endurance and peace, a community, and living water. I encourage you to see God’s faithfulness everywhere around you, constantly counseling your heart with God’s Word that ‘He is faithful to all generations.’

Keren’s words get to the heart of why Welch College exists.

Increasing Enrollment

This fall we celebrated our highest fall enrollment in 36 years. Our enrollment has grown by 30% over the past four years. This is a result of the combination of three things: 1) our new brand that includes a new name and new campus; 2) the atmosphere of spiritual formation on campus; and 3) continuous improvement in excellence.

These three things make us more competitive with other higher education institutions as evidenced by the college’s strong ranking in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges. Welch ranked 16th in the Regional Colleges—South category (colleges that award fewer than 50 master’s degrees annually). This is big for Welch.

Our first ranking came in 2010, when we ranked 54th. In nine years, we’ve gone from 54th to 16th. To put this in perspective, the next ten colleges Welch outranked had an average enrollment more than five times our enrollment and an average endowment almost nine times our endowment.

This increasingly higher ranking in U.S. News results from increased measures of excellence: freshman-to-sophomore retention rate, the rate of freshmen who go on to graduate (especially the graduation rate of Pell Grant recipients, i.e., students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds), percentage of faculty doctorates, class size, student-faculty ratio, alumni support, and peer assessment, among other factors.

Better ranking doesn’t matter so much to us because we want to keep up with bigger schools. It’s important because it speaks volumes about our quality to high- achieving Free Will Baptist students and their parents, who are being courted by schools beyond the denomination. It indicates in a tangible way that Welch provides a competitive program that stacks up well against other colleges and universities. And, since all the Best Colleges in U.S. News require regional accreditation, it distinguishes us from all the other regionally-accredited colleges as an excellent educational institution.

From what I hear, our Free Will Baptist people want this. They love that we are “holding the line” on spiritual formation and conservative Free Will Baptist theology, on high standards of student life and conduct, and with an emphasis on every student’s role in local church ministry and the Great Commission. These are at the heart of our calling and mission. Yet, Free Will Baptists don’t think there has to be a dichotomy between high spiritual standards and high academic excellence.
Alumni are paying attention. That’s why such a high percentage of our alumni give financially to the college (we ranked tenth in this measure out of 123 other colleges in our category). It’s also why we have an unusually high percentage of “legacy students” (children of alumni) at Welch. A Christian higher education consultant recently told me our 30%-plus rate of legacy students is astounding compared to the 12% average at Christian colleges in general.

We are excited about the strides we’re making in fulfilling our Christian mission, increasing enrollment, and meeting objective excellence as an institution of higher learning.

Making Financial Progress

Welch College also is making tremendous progress financially—much more than expected. This past year, we more than balanced our budget by being in the black by $174,000. Thanks be to God! He’s working in the hearts of His people, whose giving makes it possible for us to pay bills and pay down debt. It’s exciting to see liabilities going down on our balance sheet. At the end of November, we had successfully paid the first 14 months of full principal and interest payments on our long-term loan with Free Will Baptist Foundation.

An amazing year in fundraising made it possible for us to be in the black. This past year, we received more gifts than in any year of the college’s history except 2016, when we received more than $6 million in relocation gifts. It’s an exciting time to be at Welch College, because we’re poised for enrollment and philanthropic growth in the near future that will continue to strengthen us and give us greater growth than any other time in our 77-year history.

Focusing on Excellence in Academics

Consider the strides Welch is making academically. The greatest symbol of our academic excellence is a stellar faculty. Nearly 70% of our faculty has earned doctorates. This is unheard of for small denominational schools. Our faculty’s commitment and quality are revealed in student evaluations of classroom teaching. This year, we instituted a new faculty ranking system, ranking faculty as instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and professors.

But it’s not just scholarship and quality teaching that distinguishes our faculty. What sets Welch faculty apart is the mentoring and spiritual formation they offer students. This is extolled by our student body. Personal involvement in the lives of students helps fulfill our goal of shaping both the intellect and spiritual lives of our students. It helps students return and stay until graduation.

Studies reveal faculty performance is the most direct indicator of student retention. This is great news, since our freshman-to-sophomore retention rate has reached 77%, averaging 76% over the past three years. This is significant for a school of our size and resources. To grasp its significance, we’ve got to understand that, while we rank 16th among southern Regional Colleges in U.S. News Best Colleges, we rank 5th out of 123 schools in our category in freshman-to-sophomore retention. This is especially significant when you understand that academically non-selective private colleges tend to have retention rates hovering around 50%.

We’re also ramping up the number of degree programs we offer. Special education and math education have joined recent additions like pre-nursing and the Master’s in Theology and Ministry. Most notably, in January we started the Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) degree, which we believe will be one of our most popular degree programs, even surpassing our M.A. in Theology and Ministry, which has met with great success.

Quality extracurricular activities also enhance the academic and community life at Welch. So we work to foster extracurricular programs that will do just that. The majority of our students participate in music, drama, and intramural and intercollegiate athletics. This past year we added men and women’s intercollegiate soccer, which has met with great enthusiasm within the student body. During the next year, we hope to finish a new soccer field named “Foundation Field” in honor of the Free Will Baptist Foundation and its faithful support of Welch College.

Planning for the Future

God is doing something wonderful at Welch. We project enrollment will continue to increase, and I believe we’ll exceed the record enrollment of 648 students. Our growth and new campus have drawn new donors and potential donors to Welch, and the Lord is burdening their hearts to support the godly, Free Will Baptist education they see at the heart of this institution.

I believe God is working through His people to bring about the greatest era of enrollment and philanthropic growth in the history of Welch College. I believe gifts to the Building on the Legacy capital campaign will enable us to pay off debt very soon. This will allow us to move to phase two of our building program. In the next five years, I believe we’ll witness the construction of new campus housing to make room for a growing student body, a student services center, and a thousand-plus-seat chapel/auditorium (a tremendous need), which will have additional office and classroom space.

I believe in the next five-to-seven years, we’ll start new bachelor’s degree programs in culture-impacting areas such as politics, Christianity and culture, and journalism. I also believe we will be able to launch new joint degree programs like the one we have in nursing, where students with high GPAs are guaranteed admission into highly competitive fields. One of our dreams, which I believe will become reality, is a residential seminary or divinity school offering an on-campus Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree that offers substantial scholarship aid to attract students to a traditional on-campus master’s program.

Conclusion

We will never be able to fulfill these objectives, or make these dreams reality, without God working through you, our Free Will Baptist people. I’m counting on you to pray the Lord will provide our needs and add to our growth and Kingdom impact. I’m counting on you to give more sacrificially than you’ve ever given to support the greatest building and growth program in our denomination’s history. And I’m counting on you to continue pointing students to our Christian community of faith and learning.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you do for Welch. I commit to you that Welch will continue to be your trusted source for quality Free Will Baptist higher education.

About the Writer: J. Matthew Pinson has been the fifth president of Welch College since 2002. Learn more: www.Welch.edu