HU dean finds chess, business make a smart match
By MATTHEW BOWERS, The Virginian-Pilot © February 27, 2007

HAMPTON – Sid Howard Credle, dean of Hampton University’s business school, pulled chess boards and boxes of playing pieces from a classroom cabinet.

“You know how to set them up? You remember?” he asked the half-dozen or so students in sweatshirts and jeans. “White will go first. And you’ll use the Bird’s Opening.”

Pawn to F4. An attack from the side, rather than down the middle. Chatter faded, replaced by the clicks of moving pieces and groans from gambits gone wrong. Ten minutes into the class, Credle doffed his suit jacket and cracked a window.

Chess is more than fun to first-year students in Hampton’s five-year MBA program. It’s part of the curriculum. A third of the course Critical Analysis and Strategy is devoted to learning and playing it.

After experimenting with chess in business administration classes for more than a decade, Credle formally incorporated it in 2000 into the new MBA program, whose graduates finish with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

The game is a way to teach critical thinking and strategic skills in a dynamic environment.

Just as in, well, the business world.

“Think and move” is the slogan for the program’s 230 students.

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