Casper Community College Makes Top 25 [AUDIO]

The president of Casper College was walking around campus Monday handing out buttons. The occassion, the button says it all, Casper College is ranked the 25th best community college in the country by StateUniversity.com.

Casper College President Dr. Walter Nolte pointed out the top 25 ranking is based on performance data such as graduation rates and how well the college keeps students from their first and second years.

Ranked by performance:

"This is purely a statistical ranking. It's based on information, data, that we provide, mostly to the federal government. But primarily it has three rankings that are most important. One is the average ACT scores of our entering freshmen. Two is the average faculty salary at the institution. And the third major factor is student-faculty ratios."

Although Dr. Nolte was having fun passing out the top 25 buttons, he is also the president of the college, so he knows things like the funding breakdown for Casper College.

Funding breakdown:

"Our general operating budget is 60 percent state, 20 percent local property tax and 20 percent tuition, and our tuition is fairly modest on a comparative basis, not only in the region but on a national basis."

Or how much Casper College is investing in capital construction projects.

Voters helped a lot:

"The capital construction projects, we think will be at about 98 million dollars when we're done with the six projects. Thirty-five million of that was from a general obligation bond that the citizens of this county passed in 2008. We're extremely grateful for that, and it really has allowed us to leverage that money into improvement projects on the campus."

The ranking from StateUniversity.com is 25 out of 1,180 community colleges and is revised every year. Dr. Nolte says Casper College hopes to continue rising in the ranks.