She was the 1994–95 president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the first female to become a dean at Texas A&M University.
After earning an undergraduate degree at Ball State University, she worked as a teacher in Long Beach, California.
There she established the Dean's Roundtable, which featured leaders in education, and she started the Learning to Teach in Inner City Schools program.
[4] After retiring in 1999, Stallings pursued an interest in fiction writing.
On January 13, 2016, Stallings died unexpectedly due to an aneurysm.