Rear Adm. Kyle Cozad, commander of Naval Education and Training Command (NETC), visited Center for Information Warfare Training (CIWT) to congratulate the staff for winning the 2017 overall Training Excellence White "T" award, Feb. 20.

"For the first time in recent or known history, CIWT is the first learning center to ever sweep all nine functional areas," said Cozad. "It's all about competition and becoming better every day. I now challenge you to continue to excel, think differently about how we train, and knock down the barriers for our Sailors."

The annual Training Excellence Award (TEA) program recognizes commands for demonstrating superior performance for training or training support. NETC uses metrics to determine how well the commands are doing across various aspects of the mission, and the TEA award provides a way to track progress and make adjustments if needed.

To be considered for a functional area award, commands must achieve a minimum score of 90 percent on established performance measures dealing with every aspect of a training center's mission. The learning center with the highest cumulative score percentage from all the functional areas is awarded the White "T."

Cozad presented a certificate and the overall TEA pennant, or blue burgee, to Capt. Bill Lintz, CIWT's commanding officer. CIWT is authorized to display the burgee for the second consecutive year throughout 2018 to indicate their outstanding accomplishments and excellence in delivery of education and training.

"I firmly believe CIWT is successful because each of our domain members focuses daily on our job to 'prepare Sailors for war' in our area of information warfare," said Lintz." Success of our Sailors is more important that any accolade we can receive, but I am extremely proud that today the entire CIWT domain team has been recognized for this honor."

The nine functional merit awards CIWT swept include the Business Administration and Support Yellow "T"; Planning and Programming Silver "T"; Total Force Management Red "T"; Logistics Management Blue "T"; Information Technology Management Gold "T"; Curriculum Management Black "T"; Training Support Management Bronze "T"; Financial Management Award Purple "T"; and Training Production Management Green "T."

"Our entire CIWT team clearly demonstrates exemplary leadership and have proved to be the best of the best." said CIWT's Command Master Chief Mike Bates. "I'm extremely proud of their accomplishments, and more importantly, how the impact of their hard work enhances fleet readiness each and every day."

CIWT is one of the largest of the NETC learning centers with four schoolhouse commands, two detachments, and training sites throughout the United States and Japan. Training 22,000 students every year, CIWT offers more than 200 courses for cryptologic technicians, intelligence specialists, information systems technicians, electronics technicians and officers in the information warfare community.

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