CHARLESTON -- According to a recent Cornell University study, the average private university president remains in office for about 10 years.

Edwin Welch, president of the University of Charleston, has been in office for twice that long.

UC has changed quite a bit during his tenure. The private university counted fewer than 500 full-time students when he started. This year, it enrolled more than 1,400. Most of the campus buildings are new or newly renovated, and more are being added, with a new student residence hall and parking garage that recently opened not far from Welch's office in Riggleman Hall.

Welch's leadership is responsible for most of that growth. He has spent most of his career in higher education, although he originally was going to follow in his father's footsteps as an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church.

"I enjoy, however, the life of the mind and teaching and wrestling with ideas," he said.

"I wasn't certain I wanted to spend a lot of time wrestling over paint colors of church parlors and other minutia of church administration. ... The irony is presidents get to wrestle about the colors of rooms and other minutia, so now I'm doing some of those things I wasn't sure I wanted to do once upon a time."

That's not a regret. Welch, 65, is proud of the role he has played in education and is most animated when talking about the future of UC. He recounted a recent conversation with Council for Higher Education Accreditation President Judith Eaton, who told him his college was one of a handful doing learning assessments and being conscientious about the quality of student achievement.

"So, yes, we are distinctive. Yes, we're way out in front in being conscious about that," he said. "We assess what students learn and what they experience in half a dozen other ways, so that does set us apart."

Welch grew up in Maryland. As a child, his family was always on the move as his minister father went from one congregation to the next. Welch said he never really had a town or city he thought of as his hometown.

Welch has earned degrees from Western Maryland College, Boston University School of Theology and the Boston University Graduate School. He studied international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and higher education administration at the Harvard Institute for Educational Management.

He has a doctorate in social ethics and is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church.

Although Welch has no community in Maryland he considers his hometown, he has strong ties to Washington, D.C. He worked in the executive office of the president at the White House during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon to support his academic studies.

Welch's duties ranged from opening mail to helping prepare speeches. He met presidents, politicians and numerous other influential personalities during some of the most turbulent times in U.S. history.

"It was a very humanizing experience, and it probably helped me in some ways to prepare to be in leadership roles myself," he said.

He continued his public service through higher education. He served as a department chairman at West Virginia Wesleyan College, as an assistant dean at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa.; an academic vice president at Lakeland College; and as provost at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

He moved to Charleston in 1989 because his wife, Janet Welch, wanted to move back to her home state. Welch took his current job that year.

UC was a much different school at the time. Only 16 percent of its students lived on campus. Most students were older than 26. It wasn't a sustainable business model, according to Welch.

"The university was functioning almost as a community college, which is almost impossible for a private institution to do," he said.

Welch's plan for the university focused on turning it into an institution that houses most of its students on campus. While many other private institutions have turned to the Internet to bring in higher enrollment numbers, he instead wanted to give students a traditional, on-campus learning experience. Today roughly 65 percent of its students live on campus.

Under Welch's leadership, UC revised the structure and expectations of the Board of Trustees, renovated existing facilities, built new ones and overhauled the curriculum. UC added the School of Pharmacy in 2006. It opened the graduate School of Business in downtown Charleston in 2008.

A cumulative operating deficit was eliminated in 1994, and budgets have been in the black for 19 of 20 years. Annual giving also has doubled, and donations for capital projects have exceeded expectations, beginning with $20 million for the Clay Tower Building in 1998 and continuing with the $68 million to date for The Vision: UC campaign.

UC now has a $75 million estimated annual economic impact, according to figures provided by the university. That impact was recognized in 2008, when the Charleston Area Alliance named UC in its Simply the Best program.

Welch stays busy outside his official duties as president. He is a member of the One Valley Bancorp board of directors, its Trust Committee, the BB&T Advisory Board, Charleston Area Medical Center Board and Charleston Rotary.

He served an unprecedented three-year term as chairman of the board for the 34-member Appalachian College Association and a five-year term on the national board of The Council of Independent Colleges, and he has been a member of the national board of the Foundation for Independent Higher Education. He serves on the presidents council of the Association for Governing Boards and is a regular writer for Trusteeship magazine.

His honors include the Mario Palumbo Ethics Award, Spirit of the Valley, Honorary West Virginian, Distinguished Alumnus award from McDaniel College and the Foreman Award for Innovation in Private Higher Education from the Foundation for Independent Higher Education.