Plans are underway to double the enrolment of full-time students at the Bermuda College by the year 2000.

New vice president of academic and student affairs Donald Peters last week told The Royal Gazette not only does he want to see the college take in 1,000 full-time students in the next three years, he also wants it to pose stiff competition to overseas community colleges.

No stranger to enrolment problems, Dominican-born Dr. Peters managed to increase the number of blacks at the University of Mississippi by 23 percent in two years.

As the first black faculty member in the university's history, he admitted that he had his work cut out for him.

"My job was tough,'' he recalled. "I had sell the school which happens to be the flagship of the state to blacks and poor whites.

"Poor whites saw it as a rich university and blacks saw it as a racist university.'' Through personal visits to churches and homes throughout the south of the US, Dr. Peters and his recruiters were able to attract both blacks and whites.

"Part of problem was students did not see people in charge at the university who looked like them,'' he noted. "And that's one of the problems here, I have to hire Bermudians in high positions so students see people who look like them.'' While the international consultant admitted that Bermuda's socio-cultural and educational makeup was much different from Mississippi's, he said the college had to realise that the treatment of students was critical to increasing enrolment.

"We (in Mississippi) realised we can put all the marketing out there, but how we treat the students in here is going to matter,'' he noted.

Dr. Peters revealed that the college was about to embark on a "needs assessment'' to show the staff how the college was perceived.

"And if some of that perception is correct, we can fix it,'' he said. "I'm sure we can develop the strategies necessary to not only attract students into this college and increase enrolment but also to keep them for the two years they should stay here and be successful.'' The assessment is expected to be completed within 30 days.

Meanwhile, Dr. Peters said the college was already engaging in "internal marketing''.

"The only thing I have to convince our staff and faculty is that this is a great college and we need them,'' he said. "They are important to this institution and this Island. All of us have to come together and refocus our energy on providing the kind of service that will attract people to come here.'' Dr. Peters pointed out that Bermuda was different to other islands in that its students have "the luxury of going wherever they want''.

"They don't have to come here,'' he stressed. "So we need to compete with other North American institutions. We have to be as good or better than they are.

"I have tremendous respect for Bermudian parents who want to have the best for their children and I want to be one of those best. I want people to come here. I want us to utilise the college. I want the college to be the centre of excellence for Bermuda and I want the faculty to be experts in areas that impact our society.'' Noting that a modern college must be able to respond to a changing community, Dr. Peters said: "We have the responsibility to adjust to the people, they don't have to adjust to us.

"We have to have a system which takes into consideration people's worktime, figure what kind of an admissions requirement we will have based on what the norms are, library hours and weekend hours that meet the needs of the people.'' While acknowledging that some students were graduating from high schools without the requirements needed to enter the college, Dr. Peters noted that both the high schools and college had to address that problem.

"I believe that whatever happens we have to be flexible enough to admit students that can succeed,'' he said. "So one of my first tasks is to review our admissions criteria, look at ways to make it easier for students to come into our system, adjust to it and be successful.

"I've asked my deans to get back to me on some of the bottlenecks that we have that present obstacles for students to get into our programmes. It is not enough to say we have programmes for everybody. We have to be able to help students to get into programmes that they want to get into.'' Dr. Peters stressed that it was no use pointing fingers at who was responsible for educating the students.

"I'm interested in the children,'' he said. "I'm not going to get involved in whose responsibility it is. Let's just educate them.

"All of us want the brightest and best in our college, but that's not how the world is. In fact, one of things I always mention to people is that the leaders of our nations were often the average people.'' The veteran educator is also considering implementing a programme similar to the Challenge Programme in Massachusetts.

Under that programme, he explained he challenged first-year high school students to maintain at least a B average in all required courses for the duration of their time in high school.

And they are promised that if they accomplished this, they would be automatically admitted to the college and receive financial assistance.

"But we don't leave them there,'' Dr. Peters pointed out. "Every year we bring them on campus for a week to go to classes with peers that we pick and we have functions for them once a year and we give them school paraphernalia that says Bermuda College so in their mind the Bermuda College gives them a sense of pride.'' Having been in Bermuda for just under two months, Dr. Peters has already met with high school principals and plans to meet with principal of the senior secondary school Ernest Payette.

In addition to increasing enrolment and standards at the college, he also plans to involve students in the decision-making process of the college.

"We have some great students here,'' he pointed out. "They are enthusiastic.

But they need people to work with them.

"I'm trying to reinforce our student affairs division so we can create a resource bank to help students manage their government. We will have student elections rather than appointed students.'' He said the college will also have registered student organisation, so any five students can form an organisation for anything of interest, from sports to politics.

"So you will see our students interacting, having functions on campus, developing plays and all kinds of stuff,'' he boasted. "So after two or three years will have people fighting to get in here.'' Dr. Peters is married and has three college-age daughters.