Over the next two years, Brookdale will be doing a lot more construction. The work at the Western Monmouth Center in Freehold and the Auto Tech building at Lincroft is well underway. As of June 19, you can see the interiors have been gutted. Work on both will be completed in time for the Spring 2010 term. But that means there will be work going on through the fall term. Auto Tech is moving much of its class work over to the Bankier Library. Western Monmouth will continue to hold classes, but students will need to negotiate their way around construction.

The Collins Arena work, which is beginning now in the summer of 2009, will take two years before everything is complete. The first step will be to build a Fitness and Event Center that connects to the current arena. That'll be in use next year while the Arena itself gets renovated.

Now for the blog stuff: did anyone know that all of this was happening or is this the first you heard of it?

Where will everyone be spending their summer?

I just saw that Brookdale's online summer course enrollment is up almost 30 percent compared to last summer. These are the classes that are done 100 percent online. There's also a big jump in enrollment in what's called "blended" classes. That's doing half the required class time online and half in an actual classroom.

In the summer, of course, a lot of the enrollment surge may be attributed to students from other universities who come home to Monmouth County and pick up a class or two at Brookdale to save money or keep busy or whatever. And yes, many of these classes can be done online.

I wonder about how students like these online classes--either 100 percent or blended. Give us your good, your bad, and your ugly.

Going on beyond Brookdale? Here's some advice

Grab a billiards cue and a peice of billiards chalk and head down to the Student Lounge for a game of pool.

BCC almost never gets positive press like Ocean CC does. Our website is a joke, our publications have more errors, typos, poor grammer & factual errors than anyone could count. What type of image does that reflect?

I recently discovered a great way to way ahead of the game on your required reading. It's digital audio books.

On May 17, about 1,700 students will graduate with associate degrees or certificates from the College. This will not only set another record for the 42-year-old institution, it'll continue to keep Brookdale way ahead of the State's other 18 community colleges in the number of people who graduate with associate degrees each year.

A little context: Brookdale is third in enrollment but first in the number of graduates.

If you've ever visited any of Brookdale's campuses or centers, you'll see a big red decal that proclaims, "NJ's Number One Associate Degree College." With a record number of students graduating again this year, they won't be scraping off the "Number One" decals anytime soon.

Some people have said that "number one" is meaningful because it's a sign that students reached their ultimate goal: graduation. Others say that graduation isn't all that important at community colleges--that transferring to a senior institution is. Still others think "Number One" shouldn't be based on graduates but on some sort of ranking system, like having a magazine like U.S. News & World Report come in as an "independent" judge and decide whether Brookdale is really "Number One." (The magazine, however, ranks only four-year colleges and universities, not community colleges.)

We'd like to hear what you think about "Number One"--and whether this view is coming from you as a current or former student, employee, community member, or even if you're someone from Montana who stumbled onto this site and wants to weigh in on blogs.

For more than a year, a group of Brookdale employees worked together to develop a plan for improving the way we serve students in areas ranging from academic advisement to counseling to everything in between. You can see a copy of the report by checking out a link on the homepage under "News and Events." Or simply click here. Your comments about the report are welcome here or directly to the Commission at cosdcomments@brookdalecc.edu

Simple tips to help college students pass their exams and take control of their grade point averages. These are some tips that I used to make it through college and go on to pass my real estate exam, they really work.