A life-changing scholarship

The emails kept coming in.

“We regret to inform you. We regret to inform you. We regret to inform you.”

“Scholarships are a funny thing,” Alee Williams, a sixth quarter student at Palmer Florida, says with her contagious smile. “You type up the essay, and you’re hopeful, but sometimes it doesn’t work out.”

That was true for days before the notification that made her jump for joy came in. “Congratulations! You’ve been awarded the Healer’s Gift Scholarship from Palmer College.”

“I kept looking at my phone to confirm the zeroes—there were four behind the one,” Alee recalls. “It was a $10,000 scholarship, and it was honestly life-changing for me.”

As a young athlete growing up in Colorado, Alee regularly went to a chiropractor. By the age of 17, she knew she wanted to help others care for their bodies. “One of my chiropractors was a Palmer graduate. Every time I was in her clinic, she offered mini-lessons about how the body worked. I wanted that knowledge too—all of it.”

After graduating from Savannah State University in Georgia, she arrived at Palmer Florida, ready to study and determined to find a way to pay for her education. Her parents reinforced hard work and perseverance—and she was intent on bringing both to Palmer. “Honestly, the need to take out student loans was scary. I’ve always had jobs, knowing how I would pay for groceries, for housing, and my education.”

Alee knew that studying chiropractic, however, would require her full attention. Today, she meets the demands of her education thanks to a scholarship endowed by an anonymous donor. “I don’t know who the person was who started the scholarship, but I want them to know that I will cherish their gift forever,” she says. “Until you see someone’s reaction, perhaps the donors may not know how much it means to me—and students like me.”