RICHARDSON, Texas (Nov. 9, 2004) — Dr. Tim Redman, who founded and has led the chess program at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) for the last nine years, will speak to the 10th World Sport for All Congress 2004 in Rome, Italy, this week on the importance of chess as a tool for education and development. Chess is recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a sport. With 153 member nations, the World Chess Federation (FIDE) is the second largest international sports federation, behind soccer. Professor Redman was asked by FIDE to make the presentation on its behalf.
The purpose of the conference, scheduled to take place Nov. 11–14 and o rganized by the Italian Olympic Committee in collaboration with the International Olympic Committee, the World Health Organization and the General Association of International Sports Federations, is to promote fundamental values — such as team spirit, fair play, strength of character and human development — in sports. The meeting, targeted toward educators and athletic organizers across the globe, will be held at Foro Italico, site of the 1960 Summer Olympic Games. More than 1,000, from 112 different nations, will attend the Congress.
UTD and the Russian State Social University have been designated by FIDE with developing chess curricula used in educational settings. UTD offered a first-of-a-kind online chess and education courses for teachers beginning in fall 2001. No other university in the U. S. offers such a program. The curriculum, which consists of two for-credit courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, is targeted toward K-12 educators seeking new methodologies for incorporating chess into their classroom curricula and in after-school programs.
UTD also has been active with the chess-in-schools programs in the Brownville, Dallas and Richardson Independent School Districts. Chess, according to Redman, can be used to develop scientific and mathematical aptitude in K-6 children.
With one of the top collegiate chess teams in the nation, UTD last December won the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, the most prestigious tournament of its kind played each year in the Western Hemisphere.
Redman is general secretary of the World Chess Federation’s Chess in Schools Committee. A professor of literary studies in UTD’s School of Arts and Humanities, he is the author of Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991). Redman writes columns for Chess Life magazine, reviews for The Dallas Morning News and contributes articles to literary journals. He is also active in PEN Texas and was awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
Redman earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Loyola University Chicago and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in comparative literature from The University of Chicago. He specializes in American and British modernism, American studies, medieval and renaissance Italian literature, ecopoetics, biography and autobiography.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls more than 14,000 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s web site at www.utdallas.edu.