Penn State board names 3 newest alumni-elected trustees after close vote. Here’s who they are
CORRECTION: Due to a typo on Penn State’s official website, the actual total ballots cast was misstated in a previous version of this article. The total is 19,144.
After a close board of trustees election, Penn State alumni are set to see a mix of faces representing their interests — including one incumbent, one candidate from the “Penn State Forward” group and a State College financial advisor.
The three newly alumni-elected trustees include Edward “Ted” Brown, who’s served on the board since 2013; Christa Hasenkopf, an atmospheric scientist who ran on the “Penn State Forward” slate; and Barry Fenchak, a former adjunct who opened a local investment management and financial advisory practice. They will serve 3-year terms.
Eight candidates ran for the three open seats, and only 661 votes separated the No. 3 vote-getter from the No. 6. Some 19,144 total ballots were cast in this year’s election, on par with previous 5 years, which saw between 14,500 and 23,500 votes cast.
There were more than 700,000 eligible voters this year, meaning 2.6% of alumni voted in the 2022 trustees election.
Voting for the trustees remained open from April 10 through 9 a.m. Thursday. Here are the final results, as observed by multinational professional services network KPMG:
1. Edward “Ted” B. Brown III — 9,121
2. Barry J. Fenchak — 7,536
3. Christa Hasenkopf — 7,095
4. William F. Oldsey — 6,693
5. Barbara L. Doran — 6,549
6. Maribeth Roman Schmidt — 6,434
7. Farnaz Farhi — 5,540
8. Edward Smith — 4,301
The three elected alumni share different strengths, backgrounds and ages. None graduated in the same decade.
Brown is the most familiar face to alumni, as he’s served on the board since 2013 and saw nearly half of voting alumni choose him. He’s a 1968 alum, an Army National Guard veteran and the president of KETCHConsulting, a local company that specializes in business continuity planning. He also worked at IBM for 30 years, helping grow their recovery business to $1 billion.
Fenchak hasn’t yet served on the board, but he said he’s attended more than 300 trustees meetings since 2005. He graduated from PSU in 1984 with a chemical engineering degree and then received his MBA from Penn State in 1991. He is a licensed Registered Investment Advisor and Securities Principal and, for 20 years, taught several undergraduate courses.
As for Hasenkopf, she’s the new kid on the block as a 2003 alum. But she’s clearly made a professional impact. The atmospheric scientist earned her bachelor’s in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, before later earning her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. She worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. State Department, where she was the first Chief Air Pollution Advisor to the medical director. She also co-founded the environmental nonprofit OpenAQ, which houses the world’s largest open air quality database. That achievement helped earn her Eberly’s Outstanding Alumni Award (2016) and Schreyer’s Outstanding Scholar Alumni Award (2017).
The three alumni-elected trustees boast a variety of positions, but all three count a more affordable education as a priority.
More biographical information, along with a list of the trio’s priorities, can be found at trustees.psu.edu/selection/.
Elected alumni comprise nine seats on the 38-member (36-voting-member) governing body for the university, with their 3-year terms staggered so three new seats become open every year. Other trustees who were awarded seats Friday, either through appointment or non-alumni election, included Valerie Detwiler and M. Abraham Harpster (agricultural societies); Tracy Riegel (at-large); and Richard Sokolov and Naren Gursahaney (business and industry).
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 6:15 PM.
