Michael Spalding

About Michael

• He grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky; no one in his family had gone to college, but he received a scholarship to Washington and Lee University.
• Since he hadn’t expected to go to college, he felt like a fish out of water when he arrived.
• He asked his counselor if he could join the architecture major and was told that there was no such program at Washington and Lee; instead, he was pointed down the pre-med path.
• After finishing medical school, he moved to Nashville and opened a urology practice, where he worked for over 40 years.
• He retired in 2013; shortly thereafter, he learned that the daughter of one of his dear friends would likely be unable to attend college because she was an undocumented immigrant.
• After crunching the numbers, he realized that the economic benefit of sending undocumented immigrants to college far outweighed the economic implications of deporting them.
• When he looked around for organizations that were helping to send these students to college, he found nothing and no one, so he decided to start his own nonprofit.
• That organization—Equal Chance for Education—has now provided college scholarships to 93 students.