BALTIMORE --- Vice President Al Gore will be addressing the graduating class of the Maryland Police Corps on Friday, February 12 at 10 a.m. at the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies in Linthicum, Md. Directions available here.

The Maryland Police Corps, one of the nation's first Police Corps training academies, is dedicated to training a new generation of socially conscious, community oriented police professionals, says Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. The Maryland Police Corps is led by Townsend and the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention in partnership with the Baltimore City Police Department and the Maryland State Police.

The Maryland Police Corps is administered by and headquartered at UMBC's Shriver Center, established in honor of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, to use the resources of higher education for creative solutions to urgent social problems.

Police Corps is a national college scholarship program for students who agree to work as community police officers for at least four years and is modeled after the ROTC program for military services. College graduates are eligible for up to $30,000 reimbursement for past college expenses in exchange for four years of service in a local police department. Recruits also receive a $250 weekly stipend and full room and board while attending the academy. The program looks to recent college graduates to add a new level of energy to this non-traditional career choice.

During the ceremony on Friday, 27 candidates will be graduating from the Maryland Police Corps, one of the largest of 24 Police Corps programs funded by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of President Clinton's 1994 Crime Bill. To date, 44 trainees have completed the Maryland academy and are serving as officers in the field.

NOTE: 1997 UMBC graduate Steven P. Olson, the recipient of the Director's Academic Excellence Award, is the Maryland Police Corps valedictorian.