Dallas University UTD has a chess program long time ago. They have tradition to invite some strong players for their annual training tournament before the important team competition at the end of the year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_Intercollegiate_Team_Chess_Championship
There were two round robin tournaments the A and the B group in November 17-25, 2013. In my group all players were GM’s. Invited were besides me Alejandro Ramirez who actually graduated UTD few years ago. Full information is http://www.chess-results.com/tnr116802.aspx?lan=1 Tournament B was completely dominated by visiting GM’s Gelashvili and Lenderman who gave away only one draw and this was also accidental. The tournament took place in the Embassy Suites hotel venue, two games a day and I did not see the Dallas itself. It’s usual for the professional chess player who travels a lot, but sees nothing. Interesting coincident was that on this very Friday where I was in Dallas 50 years ago President Kennedy was shot. This is why Dallas is famous for and many locals do not like it. Other in smaller scale everybody heard it is because of the famous soup “Dallas”. The tournament started well for me winning first two games. Then I drew in winning position and probably lost interest because there was not any prize money involved. Of course it is not an excuse and I had still some interesting games. The general attitude was very friendly and still only Ramirez was trying to save energy for future events and was eager to agree a draw nearly in every game. The hotel was as American hotels are very big, they had very good breakfast which was important to me because of the jetlag and I could wake up pretty early. I noticed also that the lobby bar was offering free drinks in the evening instead of the common happy hour. Because of our busy schedule however it was not possible to use this offer. As I already mentioned I did not have time to see Dallas from outside and I saw only the old well known documentary about Kennedy in my hotel TV. It was kind of sad because I realized it happened exactly 50 years ago and I am now 51. I had opportunity to speak with the people who are running the chess program in UTD and its really good opportunity for chess players to get something of their effort. At least a good education which is free. They have different conditions depending of the player, but grandmasters are definitely happy with it. In their case chess pays off. In US now there are many chess programs in different universities which means also that there is already shortage of strong GM’s who are good for academic studies. In US the winning counts and you need to show the results. In Texas there is already three different chess programs, despite UTD they have one in South Plains and also in Brownsville.
There are several other chess programs the strongest chess team assembled in Saint Louise in Webster University
In my opinion however all these programs are focused mainly in tournament success, it could be interested if there is going to be some academic output. Like some researches about chess and psychology etc. In general the attempt to connect chess and higher education is welcome and we like to see more and more GM’s who are not good only in chess.
Jaan Ehlvest