The Penn State Board of Trustees just underwent a radical shift in membership, but even more changes could be on the horizon.
State Senator John Yudichak (D-Luzerne/Carbon) has unveiled his latest attempt to restructure the board of trustees. His proposal — Senate Bill 800, or “The Pennsylvania State University Commonwealth Act” — would keep the board at 36 total members, but would dramatically alter the board’s makeup.
According to a senate news release, Yudichak’s bill calls for 14 Commonwealth Trustees (six appointed by the Governor, four appointed by the President pro tempore of the Senate and four by the Speaker of the House); 10 at-large trustees appointed by a trustee selection committee and 12 alumni elected trustees.
By contrast, Penn State currently has nine alumni-elected trustees, six trustees appointed by the governor, six trustees elected by Pennsylvania agricultural societies, and six trustees elected by Pennsylvania business and industry representatives. The board also just went through a changing of the guard earlier this month, with several longtime trustees leaving effective next month.
Yudichak, a Penn State alumnus, claims his intent is to foster better governance at Penn State and a better relationship between the university and the commonwealth. He also says he wants Penn State’s board to be structured similarly to other state-related universities like Temple and Lincoln.
“Under the current leadership of the Board of Trustees, the University has walked further and further away from its historic partnership with Pennsylvania acting more like a private institution than one of the Commonwealth’s state-related universities,” Yudichak says in a statement.
The board’s current 36 member make-up is a fairly new innovation. Until the board voted to expand late last year, only 30 trustees sat on the board. Around the same time that the board voted to expand (which Yudichak believes “contravened state law“), the senator was working on a different bill that would have reduced the board to 23 members.
Senate majority leader Jake Corman (R-Centre) was a vocal supporter of Yudichak’s previous proposal, and unsuccessfully urged the trustees to delay voting on any proposal to increase the board’s size without input from Governor Tom Wolf and members of the legislature.
Representatives from Corman’s office say he has not taken a position on Senate Bill 800.
When asked for comment on Yudichak’s proposal, university officials declined to offer an opinion.
“The board devoted well over a year to working with a nationally recognized governance expert, conducted benchmarking, and deliberated on various changes to its governance structure,” says Penn State spokesperson Reidar Jensen in an email. “The board voted overwhelmingly to approve a new structure that it believes will serve the interests of the university into the future.”
The bill must still work its way through both houses of the legislature, during which time it could be subject to revision or amendment. Yudichak has previously told StateCollege.com that he wants to include input from trustees and university leaders during that process.
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