Rick Spalding ‘81 M.Div.

Rick Spalding is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council - having served on the YDS Alumni Association Board from 2012-2020, including a term as its President.  From 2000 to 2018 Rick was Chaplain at Williams College, in the Berkshires of northwestern Massachusetts. Soon after retiring from Williams, he served as Interim Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan through a church transition, a national crisis of conscience and a global pandemic.  While at Williams, Rick expanded the chaplaincy to embrace new arenas of religious, spiritual and moral life, including dialogue and collaborative humanitarian service among students and groups representing most of the world’s great religious traditions. He also led a popular January term immersion course to Nicaragua. Rick was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1981, and served in parish ministry with congregations in Albany, NY; Buckhorn, KY; New York City; and Boston; in campus ministry at Harvard University; and as a teacher at Trinity School (NYC), Harvard Divinity School and Andover-Newton Theological School. He is a 1976 graduate of Yale College, and holds graduate degrees from YDS (M.Div. 1981), Union Theological Seminary NYC (S.T.M. 1986) and Hartford Seminary (D.Min. 2012). Rick is a contributor to the Feasting on the Word and Feasting on the Gospels series, and College Chaplaincy in the 21st Century. He and his partner live in an old house in Ipswich, Massachusetts - where he loves to cook, goes sea kayaking when he can, and sings bass in just about any choir that will have him.