Bermuda College is to widen its focus later this year to include a variety of business and staff development programmes in an effort to meet the needs of the community.

Chairman Jan Spiering said he hoped to see the development of a number of short-term courses provided at the college, instead of companies having to send people overseas for training, or bring in people from abroad.

Mr. Spiering spoke to The Royal Gazette as he began his second year as chairman at the helm of Bermuda's only tertiary college.

And he promised to continue listening to businesses, parents, students and the National Training Board to make sure the college was meeting the individual needs of the Island.

"We are going to put more focus on training for businesses - management training," said Mr. Spiering.

"We hope to work with companies in Bermuda to do this. We aren't big enough to do all of this ourselves, but we can use skills from somewhere else, along with our own. We are looking at partnering with business schools and other areas who can assist us with our training needs."

And he said the kinds of courses that may be considered include things like time management training, the management of people, and so on.

However, he said the college would meet the needs of businesses and requests that they made. But Mr. Spiering said it would be a good opportunity for the college to create its own revenue.

He added: "This also ties in with our desire to have more value for money at the college.

"If we can get businesses paying for these things, then we can reduce our reliance on Government grants.

"We have the facilities here to provide businesses with what they need. A lot of companies are looking to provide staff with management training and other development training, this could be the key."

However, the chairman said the college was still in a state of re-organisation and this was just one focus that it would be taking in the next year.

Mr. Spiering said the college was attempting to get all of its technical courses, including in areas like plumbing and welding, certified by the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology later this year. And he said the college had set a target that by autumn this year, it would have partnered with eight universities overseas in a variety of courses to enable students to complete part of their degrees in Bermuda, before going abroad for the final two years.

Four partnerships have already been signed, including in law, nursing, medicine, and general studies, and a fifth is about to be signed in the next few weeks with Wheelock College in Boston, which will is to provide certification for Bermuda's teacher training course.

And plans are in hand to form a partnership with an overseas college that specialises in information technology. Mr. Spiering said others were in hand, but refused to divulge what they were.

But he said Bermuda College's plans for accreditation did not stop there.

He added: "We want to go one step further because we want to seek accreditation for the college itself, which will be a big step.

"The purpose of that is that it will really help us when we start looking at partnerships with US institutions. We have been successful without it, but it will be very useful to have it.

"We hope to get that by the end of the year, maybe."