GLEN ARBOR -- An administrator at a private Pennsylvania high school has been chosen as the new leader of a Leelanau County boarding school.
Matt Ralston will take over July 1 as president and headmaster of The Leelanau School, replacing Richard Odell, who resigned Dec. 31.
Ralston has worked for 17 years at The Hill School, a co-ed boarding school in Pottstown, Pa., about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
His current role is dean of faculty, but he also teaches a calculus class and has worked as a teacher and coach at private schools across the country.
In addition, he previously worked as an academic support coordinator for student athletes at North Carolina State University.
"We figured it's a good time for us to do something if we wanted to try something different," said Ralston, 51, who will relocate to Michigan with his wife, Mary Beth. "It looks like a place that has got a lot to offer."
A national search produced more than 40 applicants, said Robert McNutt, chairman of Leelanau's board of trustees. The field was narrowed several times before Ralston and another finalist were invited to visit campus.
He would not disclose details of Ralston's contract.
"He has been very deeply involved and committed to the residential life aspect of a boarding school," McNutt said of Ralston, who lived with his wife and two sons, now in college, in dormitory housing at Hill. "He's a very mission-oriented person, and that really appealed to us."
This is the fourth year The Leelanau School has focused exclusively on ninth- through 12th-grade students who struggle with learning, such as those with attention-deficit disorder or dyslexia.
Ralston's first teaching job was at a private school for boys with dyslexia in New York state, and said Leelanau's work with similar students appealed to him.
Schools, regardless of their students' learning abilities, need to help all children find and develop their strengths, he said.
"There's this gem of a school that it doesn't look like a lot of people are aware of yet," Ralston said of Leelanau. "Getting the word out is one of the things I hope to do."
The school enrolls 73 boarding students and nine day students this year, McNutt said, with a goal of reaching 130 students. Since the admissions change, he added, enrollment has grown by 65 percent.
Odell left Leelanau to work as president of The Pendleton School in Bradenton, Fla., a private school for student athletes that he founded about nine years ago.
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