The change agent

A few students were so excited to see their new Lower School erected last spring they scribbled thank-yous, prayers and Bible verses across the building’s concrete slab before final construction on the 35,000-square-foot building covered up their dozens of enthusiastic marker messages. So the writing hasn’t just been on the wall, it’s been on the floor. Change has been a long time coming at The Dunham School, whose private Christian campus—tucked away in Wimbledon subdivision off Perkins Road—and expanding faculty have undergone a quiet revolution since the arrival of headmaster Bobby Welch.

The 64-year-old Jackson, Miss., native came to Baton Rouge four years ago as a consultant hired to conduct a complete diagnostic on all phases of the school’s operations.

“Great planning had gone on at Dunham, but it kind of faltered and didn’t happen,” Welch says. “That was the thing that seemed to be frustrating people: having a great plan but being unable to pull the trigger. I realized that was the challenge.”

After several meetings that saw Welch deliver pinpoint ideas for growth and rethink the campus master plan, the board asked him to lead the school on a permanent basis. The board knew there was unrealized potential at the school, and in Welch, they recognized someone who could move Dunham forward.

There are basically two types of headmasters: maintainers and developers. Welch has always been the latter, he says. 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, now in its 28th year, has been diverse but deceptively simple: recruit faculty nationally, empower and engage students of all learning abilities, foster greater connections between the school and the community, and increase fundraising.

None of these could be accomplished without first increasing the school’s physical footprint, and each of Welch’s years at Dunham has seen the completion of a major construction project, including a 12,000-square-foot academic center, a 12,000-square-foot sports field house, and the brand-new 35,000-square-foot Lower School building. A 35,000-square-foot chapel and arts building with a 600-seat theater and rehearsal rooms is scheduled to open in December 2010.

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.”

Welch’s invisible path started with taking a national approach to recruiting. Now in his second year at Dunham, Academic Dean Dan Breen met Welch at a faculty placement conference for independent schools in New York City. The school’s devotion to the Harkness Method—an innovative practice of teaching through discussion with students sitting around one oval table rather than at traditional desks—and Welch’s enthusiasm attracted the Harvard-schooled educator to Dunham.

“He lives and breathes movement,” says Breen, who now manages the school’s 100-plus teachers and sets the academic tone of the curriculum. “You just hold on when he enters the room. He has lots of ideas, but he wants you to vet those ideas, to try to poke holes in them and bring good questions to the table.”

The intention of the Harkness Method is—perhaps ironically—to get students talking in class. But with new developments at Dunham, they’re able to do a lot more than that, including Internet research, podcasting, and video and music editing. Last month the school issued a new Apple laptop to each student in pre-K through 12th grade. Students in 3rd grade and up can take the computers home each night, on weekends and holidays, and even check them out for the summer break. The computers are housed in protective cases, fully insured, and if one breaks, two technicians are trained and on-site to fix it.

Plans include a new dance studio and band room, as well as new lower school cafeteria and other facilities.

“The Macs are great,” says Doug Gay, the school’s band director. “Having access to GarageBand [a software application that allows users to create music or podcasts]—it’s just moving into the future. We have to continue to tweak and come up with programs to engage these students. It’s about out-of-the-box education and passion and motivation. If you instill those things into the kids, they’ll work harder.”

The laptops are a progressive technological leap—St. Joseph’s Academy has a similar program, and the state of Maine just funded MacBooks for every public school student—and one that complements the high level of differentiated instruction provided by the school’s McKay Academic Center. McKay hosts students ranging from advanced-level tutoring to those with special needs. Staffed by part-time tutors, specialists, and Dunham faculty, McKay can benefit everyone from a straight-A student who missed a few days of class to a child with autism. “The idea is everyone can learn,” Breen says. “We don’t want to break up families because two of the kids are at Dunham but the third has special needs. The academic center has been crucial in keeping siblings together at the same school.”

When they need a break from networking or creating presentations and Web sites on their new Macs this fall, the students can grab a cup of CC’s coffee or a Smoothie King smoothie from the new on-campus café. Staffed by students with proceeds benefiting the school’s arts and music programs, the café is one part of Dunham’s ambitious new dining program.

Gone are the sugar- and fat-laden vending and soda machines. Gone too are the classic cafeteria-style lunches, replaced with healthy, dietitian-approved meals served in a renovated dining hall.

“Cafeterias are notorious for being places to just get fed,” Welch says. “We’ve changed the menu and gone to smaller round tables to give students a real sense of sharing a meal together.”

Despite hiring Breen and other recent newcomers from out of state, Welch hasn’t stopped recruiting talented instructors in Baton Rouge. Technology coordinator Nikole Blanchard joined the faculty last January from LSU Lab School. After years of teaching dance at Episcopal High School, Renee Chatelain transferred to Dunham last fall to chair the Fine Arts Department. But Welch is not only bringing in top teachers; he is helping them connect the community to the school in unique ways.

Chatelain founded the Mid City Dance Project 15 years ago this fall, and this summer Welch decided Dunham would adopt it by providing practice space, transportation and instructors for the program that teaches 400 public school students the art of dance.

“Lots of people go out into the community, like it’s separated from their normal living situation,” Chatelain says. “So they can go back to their comfort zone. It’s very separate. Dunham is bringing community to the campus. That’s a real step toward celebrating diversity and maintaining the mission of the school.”

Already Welch has offered space in the soon-to-be-completed arts center to Gay’s Baton Rouge Music Studios, an after-school program for young instrumentalists. That will bring dozens more musicians from other schools to the campus. Gay says that kind of invitation is a rarity, yet there have been others invited to the campus. South Baton Rouge Presbyterian holds its Sunday worship services inside the Dunham gym, and last summer the school loaned its home football field at the Chapel in the Oaks to Brian Kinchen for his FUNdamental Football Camp.

The school’s increased community involvement and the extreme makeover of the campus has not come without a price tag, though. Tuition has increased by roughly $700 every fall during Welch’s tenure. Not including fees for the new laptop and dining programs, admission costs range from $8,000 for kindergarteners to $10,500 for a student starting the 9th grade, making Dunham one of the most expensive primary educations in the city.

Welch says the increases are necessary to maintain a 12:1 student teacher ratio and to attract and retain the best possible faculty. But if those numbers start to scare some parents, Welch is not worried. Like any good developer, he has a plan. And that is where his fundraising skills pay off.

“It’s going to be an ever-challenging situation, but as tuition creeps up inevitably, for those who truly can’t afford it, we’ll provide more and more scholarships and need-based assistance,” Welch says. “Bottom line is, what’s exciting is that the kids are the beneficiaries. They thrive in the right space with the right teachers.”