A return the the halcyon days of genuine technical college education is what Bermuda College seeks to recapture as it pushes forward with an initiative to bring young Bermudians up to the internationally qualified standards of their peers around the world.

And one direct spin-off would be home-grown talented and skilled Bermudians being trained to such a recognised standard that they can win jobs on the Island currently filled by guest workers, whether it be in the construction industry, culinary and catering, or information technology. It is a vision that has been touted in some form before, but what makes it different this time is the collaboration of four partners to join up the dots and make it work.

The college presented a unified front with representatives from the construction industry, Technical Education Advisory Council and the National Training Board as it announced that Dr. Eugenie Simmons is the interim leader to guide the college?s technical education project.

?It is a fact that technical education here has sometimes operated in the shadow of the glorious days of its forerunner, the Bermuda Technical Institute,? said Sen. Raymond Tannock, chairman of the board of governors.

?So thorough and advanced was the Tech?s curriculum that during the heydays of the 1960s and 1970s its graduates became almost instant professionals, starting their own businesses and many of them continuing in those businesses today. Bermuda Technical Institute served its generation, and the next few generations well, before the programme was phased into part of the curricula of the Academic Sixth Form Centre and what we now know as Bermuda College.?

But Sen. Tannock said the time was right for the college to re-emerge as ?the pre-eminent standard once again for technical and vocational training in the applied sciences.?

Dr. Simmons has been the college?s interim associate vice president of technical education for the past month. Speaking at a press conference she said the college had been working with industry representatives and the National Training Board to identify job market opportunities that Bermudians can be trained for to internationally recognised standards.

She envisages that with the next ten years many occupations currently being carried out by guest workers will be filled by fully trained and certified Islanders.

The college will also ensure lecturers and tutors are trained up to the level of competence necessary to see students successfully gain the qualifications they need.

With the partnership of key shareholders ? including industry representatives who know what type of vocational job skills are needed on the Island ? and advice from the National Training Board and Technical Education Advisory Council, the College feels it can deliver the education needed to lift young Bermudians to quality careers, both on the Island and overseas, that they have previously been denied through lack of internationally recognised training.

College President Dr. Charles Green keenly advocated technical education having chosen that path himself as a young man and wants to open the eyes of the next generation to what they can achieve by opening the college up to summer camps for school students to come along and see the technical training and education opportunities on offer as they move through the school system.