Be Remarkable: Meet Dr. Mike Fitch
“I have always spent a great deal of my free time doing music-related things, and volunteering at Salem Academy has become another one of the ways in which I enjoy music and pass music along to others.”
Music has been one of Dr. Mike Fitch’s passions since high school, when a teacher inspired him to join show choir. He discovered a love for singing and joined his first a cappella quartet during his senior year. “That started me on what has been over 35 years of singing in a cappella quartets,” he said.
As a freshman at the College of William & Mary in 1990, Dr. Fitch started a men’s a cappella group. The group still exists today, and he travels to Williamsburg each spring for its concert. Since college, he has sung competitively in several a cappella quartets, including Forecast Quartet, which he joined in 2014.
Although music is a significant part of Dr. Fitch’s life, it isn’t his profession. He is an academic physician who practices emergency medicine and serves as a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Dr. Fitch’s connection to Salem Academy began through his two daughters, who graduated in 2022 and 2025. His older daughter participated in the Academy’s glee club choir program before the vocal music program met some significant challenges during the pandemic. When his younger daughter arrived at the Academy as a sophomore in fall 2022, the choir was no longer active.
Dr. Fitch said he went to Head of School Kris Sorrells and told her, “‘I have an idea. If you’re willing to let me do something a little different, I think I can build an a cappella vocal music program here.’ I told her my goal was to build a program that would continue on long after my daughters had graduated.”
Thus Salem Academy’s a cappella program was born in fall 2022, with Dr. Fitch leading the program as a volunteer. Three years later, he said his original goal is becoming a reality: “I have more singers this year than I’ve ever had, and we continue to make wonderful progress as we sing challenging four-part harmony.”
Dr. Fitch has found a way to balance his volunteer work at Salem Academy with a demanding career. “The nice part about the clinical part of my job is that as an emergency physician, we’re open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so we work on weekends and in the evenings. I work out the schedule so I can do my volunteer time here working with the kids and still fulfill my obligations as an emergency physician and a professor,” he explained.
Part of what Dr. Fitch said he enjoys most about volunteering at Salem is helping students discover abilities they may not have known they had: “Salem Academy attracts a certain kind of student that I really enjoy working with. They’re very mature, they’re very motivated, and the students who have gravitated toward singing with my a cappella singers group really have embraced the challenge. I have had singers who read music, are accomplished soloists, and come in very experienced, and then I have students who didn’t even know they were a singer until they decided to try. What I enjoy the most is helping them to see and experience a different kind of music than any of them have done before.”
Dr. Fitch records and edits at least one song with the students each year, and seven songs are currently available on Spotify and all other music streaming platforms under the name Salem Academy A Cappella Singers. The students are also preparing to travel out of state for a youth chorus competition.
But some of the program’s most meaningful results can’t be heard in a recording. Dr. Fitch sees them in the confidence students develop through performing. “I see the confidence of being able to get up on stage and be part of an ensemble from someone who would have never envisioned doing that on their own. And then the confidence they gain from doing that with a group allows them to have a little more confidence to audition for the spring musical, and maybe get a part where they have to sing by themselves,” he said.
“One of the things I’m really proud of is that over the last few years, three of our members have worked with me to apply for and be accepted to North Carolina Governor’s School for choral music. It’s very competitive, and students from all over North Carolina apply. Not only do they have to qualify academically, but they also have to audition. It’s really a testament to the type of students we get and how hard they work.”
Dr. Fitch understands this transformation from his own experience. Music became an important part of his life because someone encouraged him to sing in high school. Now, he hopes to share that same joy with his students. “My own experience with singing in high school set me on a path for music to be part of my life, an important part of my life ever since then,” he said. “I hope that even if the students who sing with me here don’t go on to sing with a group in college or necessarily do something musical, I hope they’re able to take this experience and turn it into something that gives them that joy in music.”