UT Dallas chess director Jim Stallings is greeted at his retirement gathering by Hank Mulvihill (left), a member of the UT Dallas Chess Advisory Board.
Jim Stallings is signing his last scoresheet after two decades as the face of chess at The University of Texas at Dallas.
Stallings will retire this month after 21 years with UT Dallas’ decorated chess program, including 19 as its director. A celebration of his stewardship of one of the University’s lasting symbols of excellence was held Jan. 24 in the McDermott Suite of the Eugene McDermott Library.
There, UTD officials announced both a permanent endowment called the Jim Stallings Fund for Excellence in Chess, which aims to enhance players’ skills and preparation as well as assist with travel costs, and the naming of the Jim Stallings Chess Room in the Founders Building (FO 1.506).
Stallings Endowment Fund
Thanks to support from a generous donor, the Jim Stallings Fund for Excellence in Chess, a permanent endowment in honor of Jim Stallings, has been launched. Its aims are to enhance players’ skills and preparation as well as assist with travel costs. Visit the UTD Giving website to learn how to contribute.
Under his guidance, UT Dallas won the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship six times and a pair of President’s Cups, an annual competition for the top four collegiate chess teams. UTD’s current roster features 16 undergraduate and graduate students from four continents who compete as teams and individuals against the best players and programs in the country.
Dr. Inga Musselman, UT Dallas provost, vice president for academic affairs and the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Chair of Academic Leadership, said Stallings has raised awareness and brand recognition of the University.
“The chess program is among the most prominent things that UT Dallas is known for; it’s part of the Comet story,” she said. “Jim Stallings has set a high standard that we all respect. Whether battling our in-state rivals or traveling overseas as our ambassadors, our teams have always represented us admirably.”
Dr. Donal Skinner, dean of the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College and Mary McDermott Cook Chair, described Stallings as “the difference that we all want to be in the lives of our students and university.”
“Jim has overseen tremendous changes, including the recent addition of a women’s chess team,” Skinner said. “His record of college chess championship appearances speaks for itself, and he has brought UT Dallas’ name to the world. Indeed, our chess team embodies everything that is wonderful about UTD.
“Jim has also impacted thousands of children through the summer chess camps that remain a wonderful showcase for UTD. We are so proud of everything that Jim has accomplished.”
In 1996, Stallings returned to Dallas, where he had attended Bryan Adams High School and won the state high school chess championship in 1963. He became a founding member of the nonprofit Dallas Area Chess-in-the-Schools, where he met literary studies professor Dr. Tim Redman, the originator of the UT Dallas chess program in 1996 and the President’s Cup, first held in 2001.
As the program expanded, Redman turned to Stallings in 2004 when he needed an associate director to run a chess tournament for local high schoolers and create a summer chess camp. Two years later, when Redman was ready to focus solely on teaching, Stallings got the call again.
“When I stepped down as director of the chess program, Jim Stallings was the perfect replacement,” said Redman, now professor emeritus. “He understood the importance of chess as a symbol of UTD’s intellectual excellence.”
Dr. Alexey Root, a lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and former associate director of the chess program, praised the degree of planning and organization Stallings implemented.
“Jim brought military precision to the chess program,” she said. “Under his leadership, the chess program flourished.”
Alongside then-coach Rade Milovanović and assistant director Luis Salinas, Stallings oversaw more than a decade of triumphs, both in competition and in building relationships.
“Tim Redman imparted these words of wisdom: ‘There are two primary functions of the University: teaching and research. Whenever possible, the chess program should be involved in those activities,’” Stallings said. “We reached out and did things within the University, such as MRI-based experiments with researchers in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.”
International Master Dmitri Shneider BS’07 played for UTD when Stallings took over. Today, he is vice president of global operations at Chess.com, the largest online platform for the game.
“His record of college chess championship appearances speaks for itself, and he has brought UT Dallas’ name to the world. Indeed, our chess team embodies everything that is wonderful about UTD. … We are so proud of everything that Jim has accomplished.”
Dr. Donal Skinner, dean of the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College and Mary McDermott Cook Chair
“Jim took UT Dallas chess to the next level, and as members of the team, we knew he really cared for us,” Shneider said. “Jim is someone I could rely on both during and after my time at UT Dallas. He was always supportive and did his best to teach us youngsters life lessons that we still use today.”
UT Dallas chess coach Julio Catalino Sadorra BS’13, who played for Stallings and later worked alongside him, said that Stallings solidified the program’s community outreach.
“Jim set the standard on management and sustainability of our operations: tournaments, outreach events, the Chess Educator of the Year award and summer chess camps,” Sadorra said. “He was always there at community events with the players, setting up tables, speaking to visitors. At the end of the day, with everyone worn out, he would challenge one of the grandmaster volunteers and beat them — including me.”
Sadorra described Stallings as “the engine of our chess program,” which currently features eight players who have achieved the rank of grandmaster, including three who earned the title as UTD students.
“Since I applied for a UT Dallas chess scholarship back in 2009, I’ve watched Jim set the example. It was emphasized from the very first meeting that academics comes first and chess second — the standard of our university,” he said. “He was there through the wins and losses, and whichever it was, we went back to work.”
Stallings said various international team trips during his tenure stand out, including a 2009 trip to Cuba for the first contest between U.S. and Cuban college players in a half-century, and a memorable visit to China in 2008.
“We took the team to Beijing, and there had recently been a very severe earthquake elsewhere in the country. The host coach told us he wasn’t sure we’d still come,” Stallings said. “They had a memorial service during our trip, and everybody just stopped to honor those killed. It was a moving moment. I’d never been part of anything like that.”
During his tenure, UT Dallas earned 14 berths in the President’s Cup, and from 2006 to 2012, the Comets were outright champion of the Pan-Am tournament four times and shared the title twice. For Stallings, that event holds particular significance: He participated in it as a UT Austin student in 1969 and 1970.
“Back then, nobody would have dreamed of any of this,” he said. “We had teams from clubs, but nothing that was funded. This is a golden age for chess, here and around the world.”
