The Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business Administration of American International University-Bangladesh has organized a launching ceremony of the two new Marketing Major Courses, entitled “Agro-based Product Marketing” and “Product Innovation and Management” to be offered to the students of the BBA Program in the upcoming Summer 2016-2017 Semester. This is a special effort of AIUB that for the first time in Bangladesh these two courses are being introduced in the Academia and offered to the Undergraduate Program of the university.

Based upon the market potentiality and demand driven by the companies in Bangladesh, such courses have been a latent need among the corporates. KATALYST, an organization promoting the agro-sector in Bangladesh have jointly collaborated with AIUB to develop and offer these two new courses to the academia.

After extensive research surveys with the stakeholders and rigorous analysis, the course outlines, and contents of these two courses have been finalized based upon the inputs given by the Local and Foreign Consultants, Academic and Industry Experts during the weeklong Workshops. The total development process took more than 1 year time to come to a successful end.

Two separate academic teams were developed and assigned responsibilities to develop the outline, contents and study materials for their respective courses. Mr. Stanley Rodrick, Mr. Hamidul Islam, and Dr. Sahin Akter Sarker, Assistant Professors, from the Department of Marketing were responsible for “Agro-based Product Marketing” team, while Ms. Tahsina Khan, Assistant Professor and Mr. Saihad Sahid Rahman, Lecturer, Department of Marketing for “Product Innovation and Management” team.

On March 23, 2017, the Launching Ceremony was organized at the FBA Building # 1, Auditorium. The Program was officially opened with the Recitation from the Holy Quran. Dr. Carmen Z. Lamagna, Honorable Vice Chancellor of AIUB and Project Proponent, inaugurated the program and mentioned about the significance and value of these two new courses to the students of AIUB. Mr. Gupta Bahadur Banjara, Head of Capitalization, KATALYST, also shared his thoughts on the prospects of these two courses to be offered at the academic level.

The Honorable Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean, Faculty of Business Administration, Prof. Dr. Charles C. Villanueva, the Project Director, presented the entire Development Process of these two new courses to be offered at AIUB. The session was further followed by the presentations on the respective courses, the topics which were presented were the course rationale, descriptions, contents, suggested activities, mark distributions, job prospects, etc.

Mr. Stanley Rodrick, Team Leader of “Agro-based Product Marketing” course, Ms. Tahsina Khan, Team Leader and Mr. Saihad Shahid Rahman, Team Member of “Product Innovation and Management” course, have presented the contents of their respective courses.

The Launching Ceremony was graced by the presence of Prof. Dr. Tafazzal Hossain, Vice President (Academics), & Dean, FSIT, Prof. Dr. ABM Siddique Hossain, Dean, FE, Prof. Dr. Tazul Islam, Dean, FASS, Prof. Dr. Nisar Ahmed, Director, Graduate Programs, FBA, Mr. R. Tareque Moudud, Director, Office of Placement and Alumni. Faculty members from Department of Marketing and other Departments were also present from AIUB.

Prof. Sheikh Abdus Sabur, Department of Agribusiness & Marketing, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Dr. Maruf U. Islam, President & CEO, The Olives, Mr. Aftab Mahmud Khurshid, Group CMO & Head of Business Development, Super Star Group, and Ms. Sumi Ghosh, Senior Executive, HR & OD, Aamra Networks Limited, were present as representatives from the Academic and the Corporate Sectors in Bangladesh. Delegates from KATALYST and selected students from the Marketing Major of the BBA Program were also present during the event.

At the closing fragment of the ceremony, Prof. Dr. Nisar Ahmed, Director, Graduate Programs, FBA, expressed his Vote of Thanks to all the Project Partner’s Representatives, Guests, Academicians, and the students of the Marketing Major for their relentless support to make these two new courses a success in their respective arenas. Special acknowledgment was accorded to Katalyst for the technical and financial support it has extended to the development and completion of the project.