I'm fairly new to ASP.NET MVC and am looking for help with the following issue.

I have a DropDownList control in a view. The selected value will be stored in an integer field of my model.

My preference is to not hard code the text and values in markup. In addition, I'd like to be able to use this same list of text and values in DropDownList controls in other views.

I'm not sure if I need to create a class that initializes these values somewhere, or perhaps I need an extension method. I could use some guidance on the best way to approach this.