Celebrating comet's 25 years of providing innovative education and training

The Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training (COMET) has continually evolved during its 25-year history in order to meet the needs for global geoscience education. To provide the services necessary to accomplish its objectives, COMET created three internal programs: residence, distance learning, and outreach. COMET's first director was Bill Bonner, who was the former director of the NWS's National Meteorological Center. Numerous instructors from both operational and research backgrounds have in the past and currently generously provided their time and expertise. COMET's outreach program was created to address the objective of facilitating the transfer of research results to operational practice. Over the last quarter century, there have been massive increases in computing power that have made significant differences in COMET's capabilities. Nowadays, video conferencing over the Internet has made the COMET virtual classroom a viable alternative to sending students to residence classes. For its international audiences, COMET has developed several unique products and has also adapted a number of lessons originally designed for U.S. audiences.