Arizona's Public Universities

Abstract Information technology (IT) and systems have become the backbone of almost every organization. So, good IT audits are essential to ensure proper controls, security, and efficient functioning. But it's not easy to implement an IT audit strategy that justifies its cost and promotes effective use of your information systems! What are the keys to doing that? The author of this article has some answers. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Design of Experiment (DOE) approach was used to optimize the characteristics of intrinsic a-Si and doped a-Si films for silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells where effective lifetime and bulk resistivity were used as optimization parameters for intrinsic and doped a-Si respectively. The performance of the optimized films on alkaline etched wafers required additional optimization of post etch cleans. We have developed a cleaning cycle which allows 725-735 mV local Voc and 81- 83% local pFF on non-metallized SHJ solar cells with no reflectance losses. A batch of 16 wafers demonstrated good across wafer and wafer to wafer passivation uniformity with 2.3 ms mean effective lifetime and 0.6 ms standard deviation.

Photoluminescence (PL) is a fast useful tool for the characterization of minority carrier lifetimes in silicon wafers and solar cells. Low pressure sodium (LPS) bulbs have a single emission line at 590 nm that is ideally suited as a light source for a low cost photoluminescence system. The large difference in wavelength between the excitation at 590 nm and the silicon luminescence at 1150 nm simplifies the long pass camera filter. The lamps are very low cost and use simple ballasts similar to fluorescent light fixtures. The light is safe so that the systems do not require the complex shielding and interlocks needed by the class IV lasers typically used as PL illumination systems. We demonstrate that the sodium light sources are especially useful in the characterization of heterostructure solar cells where the surfaces play a key role in process optimization.

The study investigated the impact of Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU) Dispute on management of public universities in North Central Nigeria. The importance of this topic is that if ASUU strike is duly utilised, it might yield the following possible outcomes: boost the productivity of staff, provision of standardised infrastructural facilities, establishment of standard universities across Nigeria, improved staff welfare, swift remittance of research grants to the various benefitting bodies, swift remittance of academic earned allowance, increase in salaries and increase in education budgetary allocation and change of academic staff union of universities’ payment platform, among others. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study was 1,775 academic staff. The Sample size for the study was 326 academic staff. This size was determined by using Taro Yamen Formula for Sample size determination. Multi-stage sampling was used to select the sample at different stages. The instrument used was IASUUDMPUQ Questionnaire. This was used to collect data from the respondents comprising academic lecturers, particularly in the area of university autonomy, funding, and working conditions. A four-point scale was used to answer the research questions. T-test statistic was used to test hypotheses 1 – 3 at significant level of 0.05. The major findings of the study revealed that the universities’ ability to employ their staff improves their administrative effectiveness. Universities’ ability to determine their own content of courses ensures smooth instructional delivery, and universities’ ability to select areas of research based on the school’s original blueprint enhances school administration. Also, the findings revealed that ASUU’s ability to enforce government to pay salaries of university employees influences the administration of public universities. ASUU’s ability to enforce government to improve academic research and development enhances universities’ administration, and ASUU’s ability to enforce government to purchase instructional resources for classrooms influences the administration of public universities. The findings further revealed that non-payment of earned allowances to academic staff hampers effective administration of public universities, non-provision of working equipment/teaching, research, and community service to academic staff negatively affects the administration of public universities, and non-payment of backlog of salary after strike actions affects academic staff empowerment negatively. Based on the findings of the study, further researches proposed include Impact of Academic Staff Union of Universities’ Dispute on the Management of Private Universities in North Central Nigeria and Influence of Academic Staff Union of Universities’ Dispute on the Administration of Public Universities in South Eastern Nigeria.