HEC-Microsoft’s IT programme extended to SMIU

Karachi
The Higher Education Commission and Microsoft’s strategic alliance for providing centralised IT services to academia has been extended to Sindh Madressatul Islam University (SMIU) also.
In his presentation to the deans, chairpersons, senior management and students of the SMIU on Thursday, Microsoft’s representative Usama Mustafa said alliance was formed initially to provide IT services and training to 30 to 40 public sector universities, mostly engineering ones, but now this cooperation has been extended to 156 universities, and SMI University was one of them
The HEC and Microsof entered into an agreement last December for starting a programme to transfor education, foster local innovation and enable jobs and opportunities.
Mustafa said that the HEC was also considering the level of IT usage in the universities for assigning them the ranking.
He said, “Microsoft also provided operating system with license to 0.2 million laptops given to the students under the Prime Minister’s scheme,” and maintained that the students, especially of IT and BBA and MBA of public sector universities, were being trained from their sixth semester to avail job opportunities in the industries.
Dr Syed Asif Ali, dean of the IT department a the SMI University, appreciated the efforts of HEC and Microsoft for extending technical expertise to the SMIU faculty and students, saying it will ultimately benefit the country.

Awareness session
Meanwhile, the SMIU’s Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) also organised an awareness session on “How to write Self Assessment Report (SAR)”.
Giving presentation on the subject Arslan Wasti said that the objective of self-assessment was to maintain and continuously enhance academic standards and students’ learning.
Director QEC Dr Tasneem Ahmad also shared his views on the topic.