LORMAN – A proposed agreement to settle a 26-year-old desegration case gives Alcorn State University a chance at national prominence, the university’s president said Tuesday.

&uot;This would allow us to provide additional educational opportunities to students in Mississippi of all races,&uot; Dr. Clinton Bristow said as he reflected on the implications in a $500 million settlement in the Jake Ayers case announced Monday.

The 1975 lawsuit claimed discrimination against students at the state’s three historically black universities as well as black students attending the state’s historically white universities.

&uot;I have a feeling of great anticipation about how we’ll be able to move into a status of national prominence right here in Southwest Mississippi,&uot; Bristow said.

&uot;What we will be able to do will economically, intellectually and culturally further develop this part of the state.&uot;

The Natchez campus, now the site of the school of nursing and the school of business, also offers undergraduate and graduate courses in education. Natchez will be able to increase the number of courses and degree-granting programs, Bristow said.

&uot;We’ll have additional facilities for the Natchez campus, including the new fine arts center to complement our new business center.&uot;

The fine arts center will offer opportunities to form partnerships with Natchez organizations to build programs for the center, he said. &uot;This is something we have talked about for five years.&uot;

At the main campus in Lorman, Bristow said, new and enhanced undergraduate programs in science and pre-professional courses will be offered. In addition, there will be new master’s level programs and a new science research center.

&uot;The Lorman campus will become a research center in animal and plant genetics. Our faculty and our students will have access to complete research in biotechnology.

Darryl Grennell, Adams County supervisor for the 4th District, has taught microbiology at Alcorn for 11 years and, like Bristow, predicts positive results for the university as a result of the lawsuit settlement.

&uot;It’s going to have a positive impact on the university and a big impact on Southwest Mississippi,&uot; Grennell said. &uot;And at the Natchez campus I look at the synergy between Copiah-Lincoln and Alcorn, with the nursing school, business center and a new fine arts center; this is going to be a good thing for the two schools.&uot;

The university also will expand its Vicksburg campus, bringing it nearly in line with what is offered at Natchez, Bristow said, adding that he expected the Vicksburg campus to be the hub of a super-computer technology center. &uot;We’ll really become the university of Southwest Mississippi,&uot; he said.

The settlement, if approved in 45 days by U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers, would provide the following:

4$246 million in funding over a 17-year period for academic programs at the three black universities, Alcorn, Mississippi Valley State University and Jackson State University.

4$75 million in funding over a five-year period for capital improvements at the three universities.

4$70 million in public endowments created over a 14-yar period and $35 million in private endowments raised in a seven-year period, with only the interest to be used to create new academic programs and to increase other-race enrollment at the three universities.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat and Mississippi State University President Mack Portera have agreed to lead the fund-raising drive for the private endowment fund.

4$6.25 million to the summer development program in which all Mississippi universities participate to assist students who do not qualify for regular admission to the university system.

The 45 days will allow members of the plaintiff class to study the proposals. &uot;The settlement is the result of multiple acts of collaborative leadership,&uot; said Carl Nicholson, president of the board of the state Institutions of Higher Learning.

The lawsuit was filed by Jake Ayers of Glen Allan on behalf of his son, Jake Ayers Jr., and other students in 1975. The United States intervened in the case as a plaintiff shortly after it was filed.

U.S. Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft responded to the proposed agreement on Monday. &uot;The important agreement that we have reached with the state of Mississippi will increase access to quality educational opportunities and benefit all of Mississippi’s students and citizens,&uot; he said in a release from the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

Bristow, president at Alcorn since the 1995-96 school year, said both sides in the case had to compromise. &uot;Both sides negotiated diligently. There was give and take on the part of each party. Neither side got all it wanted; but we would like to see it settled and approved,&uot; he said.

Meanwhile, though, spirits are high at Alcorn, where plans are under way to move into a new era at the university. Student population is 2,860, with 2,421 of those full-time students and 439 part-time.

&uot;We’ve already started shifting gears. If everything is approved, we’ll accelerate our plans. Also, this is recruiting season, and we need all the new students we can get.

&uot;We have great growth potential and we have to take advantage of that. We want to keep our students in Mississippi.&uot;