Each year more than 2,000 full-time LaGuardia students gain valuable workplace experience as interns for approximately 400 companies in New York City, while earning about $5 million. The LaGuardia Urban Center for Economic Development (LUCED) provides a host of services to small and large local businesses. Among its programs is Preparing for Profit, which teaches women, minority, and small business owners how to compete successfully for government contracts; since 1991, more than 900 graduates have won an estimated $30 million in contracts. Seeking to ease the path of immigrants into economic self-sufficiency, the College collaborated with the Board of Education to open the International High School, which serves non-English speaking immigrants who come from more than 40 countries and speak more than 30 languages. A similar alternative high school offering strong school-to-work career paths is the Robert F. Wagner Institute for the Arts and Technology, which opened in 1995. The borough's first comprehensive School-to-Work program involved collaboration with School Districts 29 and 30 in Queens and 40 local businesses. It exposes K-12 students to an array of curricula designed to prepare them for success in the workplace. Perhaps the City's most ubiquitous profession is enhanced by the College's Taxi and Limousine Institute, funded by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Among a variety of College-sponsored work force enhancement initiatives are a summer youth employment program, computer training for long-term unemployed and dislocated workers, the City's largest program for hearing impaired adults, and annual education services to more than 3,000 Rikers Island inmates.

Graphic elements drawn for LaGuardia Community College's internet home page at  www.lagcc.cuny.edu.