Southwestern Community College recently earned a ranking of fourth place among the nation’s best community college.

The ranking was bestowed by Washington Monthly.

“Our students have told us all along that we are good, but it’s great to be recognized now by the rest of the country,” said SCC President Cecil Groves.

The ranking was based on results from the nationwide Community College Survey of Student Engagement survey, along with federal graduation rates. The CCSSE survey tests colleges on how well they use teaching techniques and student support services that have been proven to lead to better learning and student success, such as how often students collaborate with other students and interact with faculty.

CCSSE uses five benchmarks in rating effective community colleges: active and collaborative learning, student effort, academic challenge, student/faculty interaction and support for learners.

For the past two years Southwestern received Superior ratings from the North Carolina Community College System. SCC earned this distinction based on its achievement in the performance measures utilized by the General Assembly to assess state community colleges.

“We know we ranked well in comparison to the state’s 58 other community colleges. From CCSSE we knew we exceeded both the state and national averages. But until this Washington Monthly report, we didn’t realize how high other agencies rated us, too,” said Groves. “We are the only North Carolina community college in the top 10.”

SCC offers more than 50 curriculum programs in Arts and Sciences, Career Technologies, College Transfer and Health Sciences. In addition, the college provides a variety of Continuing Education courses at various locations throughout its service area. Most of these courses are designed to prepare students for entry into an occupation, upgrade skills of employed individuals, and provide opportunities for self-improvement.

In addition to the SCC campus in Sylva the college also has facilities in the service area that include: a center in Cashiers; the Public Safety Training Complex, Business and Industry Training Center in Macon County; the SCC Cherokee Center on the Qualla Boundary; and the Swain County Center at Almond which also houses the SCC Small Business Center. In addition, construction is underway on a 31-acre site in Franklin for a new Macon Campus.