Consultant-turned-headmaster brings change to Dunham

There are basically two types of headmasters: maintainers and developers. Bobby Welch, a Mississippi native who came to the Dunham School four years ago as a consultant, has always been the latter. At Savannah Christian Preparatory School, Welch initiated an enrollment boom from 400 to 1,844 students across four campuses. Later, he founded Hilton Head Preparatory School by merging two existing institutions. Welch’s plan for Dunham has been diverse but deceptively simple: recruit faculty nationally, empower and engage students of all learning abilities, increase fundraising, and foster greater connections between the school and the community. But Welch says there’s another component to academic progress — one he calls an invisible path. “Everybody can drive by and see brick and mortar in place, but what they don’t see is the development of the faculty and programs and in a Christian school like ours, the spiritual development of our students,” Welch says. “We spend a lot more time on that invisible part than we do the visible part.” To read the 225 magazine article about how Welch is bringing changes to Dunham, click here.