Giving Day Faces of Philanthropy

Jesus Guillen

 

Jesus Guillen, freshman from Brownsville, is an electrical engineering major, Honors College student and chess champion who credits his sister for his love of the game and his parents for pushing him to always do better at whatever he tried.

He also is one of only 10 in the 2024 cohort of UTSA’s Top Scholars, highly motivated, high achieving students recruited from around the state for the university’s premier scholar program that Jesus calls “an opportunity of a lifetime. Not many people have this opportunity, and I thank God that I’m blessed with it.”

“My father comes from a family of migrant farm workers, and he has always wanted me and my sister to succeed,” Jesus noted. “My parents were amazingly supportive of me, no matter what I did, staying with me at chess tournaments for however long I played, going on long trips for chess tournaments or robotics or whatever it was.”

While his father and mother, who is completing a doctorate in education at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, were always there for him, he has his sister, now a senior biology major at St. Mary’s University, to thank for introducing him to chess.

“I started playing in pre-kindergarten because my sister had always wanted to teach me to play,” he recalled. “We ended up playing on the same team in elementary school, and our parents would go everywhere with us, whether it be Nashville, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas – wherever the tournaments were. All of us would get together as a family. Our parents were always our greatest supporters.”

But for Jesus, chess is more than a game. “Everything is like a methodical process and, of course, it is one of the hardest games to play. There is a study that shows that people who play chess are actually a little bit better in math. The chess board is really just an algebra thing, a coordinate grid that kids learn at an early age,” he said. “It really nurtured my love of math and physics.”

He also said that chess is his great stress reliever. “I play every day. I’m in an organization, the Rowdy Chess Club, and I love being around that group.”

Experiencing on-campus life and being able to socialize with new friends was a little delayed for the new freshman. He spent his first semester studying online from his home in the Rio Grande Valley after the campus was virtually shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he was able to move to his honors residence hall for the spring semester. “I’m always going to remember my freshman year,” he said.

As he looks to his own future, he has some advice for those students coming behind him: “Keep striving, never settle. That was the advice my parents gave me, and I thank God I have such supportive and amazing parents who pushed me to do my best. That’s why I am where I am today, but even then, I continue thinking that I could do more, always do more, never be satisfied.”

UTSA Giving Day is an opportunity to support programs that make a difference for students like Jesus. To learn more, visit givingday.utsa.edu.