AIUB achieves yet another milestone! On Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 11 AM, the 44^th Syndicate Meeting of AIUB was held virtually on the Microsoft Teams online platform. Dr. Carmen Z Lamagna, Vice Chancellor of AIUB presided over the virtual meeting in presence of other members of Syndicate, Prof. Dr. Md. Rafique Ullah, Prof. Dr. Md. Selim, Prof. Dr. Charles C. Villanueva, Prof. Dr. Tazul Islam, Mr. Pius Costa, Prof. Dr. Md. Abdur Rahman and Mr. Manzur H. Khan. Mr. Manirul Islam and Mr. Ziarat H Khan were also present during the meeting on special invitation.

The syndicate members appreciated the exemplary initiative taken by AIUB to keep academic operations uninterrupted while the whole world has come to a stand still due to COVID 19 virus. In the 1 hour long meeting, various steps taken by AIUB to shift the classes online since March 20, 2020 and successfully nearing to the end of Spring 2019-20 semester were presented. The numerous options of online assessment methodologies as recommended by the Academic Council were also discussed in the meeting and the members have reached a unanimous consensus about their effectivity in the current crisis condition. Prof. Dr. Md. Rafique Ullah and Prof. Dr. Md. Selim, the nominated Syndicate members of the University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Education, overwhelmingly appreciated their affiliation with AIUB and expressed that to the best of their knowledge AIUB is only university of the country who has successfully shifted all of its academic operations virtually. They were pleasantly surprised to see AIUB’s usage report of Microsoft Teams during the online classes which showed the highest range of inclusion that AIUB has achieved after being virtual (as following).

It is worthy to note here that, AIUB has been affiliated with Microsoft live.edu, currently known as Microsoft 365, since 2008, making it one of most long-standing and strong collaborations, with the technology giant, in the country till date. Being one of the first private universities in Bangladesh to make the move within days of the initial outbreak of COVID 19 in the country, AIUB has gone fully virtual with its classes with the licensed MS Teams App that students and faculty members can access using their own university email IDs. AIUB is among the few global universities that enjoys unlimited user access license in the Microsoft 365 platform. In its ongoing Spring 2019-20 semester, approximately 10000 active student users along with around 650 faculty members and officials of AIUB are accessing this online platform, utilizing it to its full capacity for online class lectures and team-based work projects.