**PRESS RELEASE**

For Immediate Release:
Monday, March 13, 2006

Contact:
Matt Losak, 301-431-5453

FORMER VIRGINIA GOVERNOR MARK WARNER TO OFFER COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AT NATIONAL LABOR COLLEGE

Silver Spring, Md.-Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner will be the commencement speaker at the National Labor College’s 2006 graduation ceremony to be held on Saturday, June 24th at 10 a.m. on its Silver Spring, Maryland campus.

“Governor Warner is credited with making Virginia the best run state in the nation, and in so doing, he has been a friend of working families and a champion of adult education,” said John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president and chairman of the NLC Board of Trustees. “We look forward to hearing his views on the importance of education in helping America’s workers thrive in the global economy.”

The NLC is in the final stages of a campus expansion and refurbishment to make room for increased enrollment and labor conferencing. The Lane Kirkland Center, expected to be completed this fall, will house state-of-the-art computer learning facilities, meeting rooms and an 8,000 square foot plenary room. In addition, the NLC is implementing a nationwide system of articulation agreements with union training programs and community colleges that will promote access to higher education to thousands of workers in professional and technical trades.

“Governor Warner is coming at a very exciting time in the NLC’s history,” said Susan J. Schurman, NLC president. “The NLC has created an innovative worker-friendly curriculum and restored a campus now poised to strengthen union leadership, increase the value of workers on the job and help workers everywhere earn a Bachelors degree, which, in my view, has become as essential today as a high school diploma used to be.”

The National Labor College is the only college in the world exclusively dedicated to educating union members, leaders, activists and staff. Originally founded in 1969 as the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, the center became the NLC in 1997 offering upper level degree completion programs for union members seeking to finish their college education. The NLC offers a unique combination of fully online courses and programs along with partially online program with a low-residence on-campus component that allow full-time workers with families maximum flexibility to schedule study time.

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