In October 2023, Melissa Gilliam was named the incoming president, starting her term on July 1, 2024.
On July 1, 2024, Melissa Gilliam began her tenure as the university's 11th president. On October 16, 2024, the 2024 Boston University strikes ended.
==== Response to the COVID-19 pandemic ====
The university closed down due to the COVID-19 and shifted to online learning for the remainder of the semester on March 11, 2020. For the fall 2020 semester, BU offered a hybrid system that allows for students to decide whether to take a remote class or participate in-person. Larger classes would be broken down into smaller groups that rotate between online and in-person sessions. The school started administering its own COVID-19 testing for faculty, staff, and students on July 27, 2020. The new BU Clinical Testing Laboratory has accelerated testing that can give results to students, staff, and faculty by the next day. The lab uses eight robots to process up to 6,000 tests per day. A contact tracing team is part of …
