The recent NOAA-NCIM jointly sponsored Public-Private Partnership Workshop held on June 1, 2006, at Howard University was a beginning step in a larger effort to initiate true dialogue and collaboration between two of the three main sectors of the weather and climate enterprise. Because a one-day workshop reaches only a limited number of people, we are developing a distance education module that helps all public and private sector managers and other professionals better understand and appreciate how each sector contributes to U.S.'s highly-competitive weather enterprise. An anticipated and desired outcome is for meteorologists to forge collaborations that results in development of a collective vision to grow the enterprise.

We will briefly address how the NOAA National Weather Service's Training Division was able to leverage existing, unique personnel resources in the OU Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies to go beyond a one-day workshop to a far-reaching effort. The paper will also discuss how distance education can create a place for public and private sector leaders to come together to meet, understand, and appreciate the other sector in order to create real change that advances the enterprise as a whole.