By Aliesia Berryman
Casper College will be featured as the final episode for season 14 of the Amazon Prime series, The College Tour.
CC is the first Wyoming school to be featured in the series. Alex Boylan, host and producer of the series, first came up with The College Tour because incoming college students rarely get to go to every college they are interested in. For lots of kids, their parents can only afford to take them on one college visit, and even then that trip is not guaranteed for those students.
“We wanted to create something that any high schooler, adult learner, parent, anyone can sit back from the comfort of their home.” Boylan said. “whether it’s on TV, on their mobile device, and tour the country.”
Boylen said that while every school does a great job in telling its story in The College Tour, every school is presented in the same format.
“It’s like apples to apples.” Boylen said.
The College Tour reached Casper College in the Fall semester of 2023, and filmed nine students on campus from Nov. 11 – 15.
Christopher Lorenzen, head of public relations for CC, was there every step of the way along with other members of his team.
“The students did a tremendous amount of work from writing scripts to doing practice videos,” Lorenzen said..
The production team for The College Tour put together a program to help schools with pre-production – which CC was able to complete in half the time in order to secure its spot in this season of the show. The team also led students and faculty through the filming process.
“It made things a hundred times easier for us, but it also brought that experience and insight into developing an episode of this magnitude with them.” Lorenzen said.
The goal for the PR team at CC was to showcase the college’s strengths like: hands-on learning, innovation, career readiness, academic resources, and online learning. Having watched students filming their segments, Lorenzen was able to confirm that these attributes were what students enjoyed most about CC.
“To hear them say that it’s very welcoming and accepting, to hear them say that they love being able to get to know their instructors and get their attention, to get all those things that are important at the student level. They’re saying that in these interviews. And that validates what we’re trying really hard to do here,” he said.
The College Tour started in 2020 and Boylan sees how the schools have benefited from being featured in the series.
“Enrollments go up, retention goes up, fundraising goes up. I believe it’s a 3% increase on average of a retention rate at a college. Which is such an important thing because it just means we’re helping students find the right fit.” He said.
Lucy Jane Crimm is one of the students featured in CC’s episode. She was given an outline for writing a script and wrote 200-300 words. She also had to memorize it and then say it in front of the camera.
“It was a lot more work than I thought. It was very professional, they have a whole process that they use for every school.” Crimm said.
The crew worked all day every day during the whole week. Crimm said they had two hour time slots for each subject being filmed.
There is also a benefit for the students featured in the episodes as they get a unique addition to their resumes and special access to a LinkedIn page started by The College Tour.
“There’s a great community there and it’s so fun because one student might be moving from Casper to Salt Lake City, UT and find someone there on that page,” Boylan said.
Having spent these last four years in the higher education sphere, Boylan wants to give advice to college students everywhere.
“Find the people you aspire to be and ask them for some time. Say ‘I’m a college student, can I get ten minutes of your time? I have two questions about your career’. You have a lot of power as a college student. Use that power to open doors, to build relationships now. Those doors start shutting as soon as you graduate.” he says.
Post filming, the episode featuring Casper College takes six months to produce. You can find out more about The College Tour and watch previous episodes on their website, www.thecollegetour.com.
Along with Crimm, the following students were filmed for The College Tour: Dawsen Pater, Kaitlyn Flower, Keely Shay Ottersbach, Valerie Liska, Jordan Napier, Wyatt Eadus, and Alex Head.