Four approved for Penn State alumni trustee ballot, including Krieger, Paterno

Four candidates will be placed on the ballot to be on the Penn State board of trustees in the upcoming alumni trustee election after a subcommittee of the board gave its stamp of approval Monday afternoon.

The nominating subcommittee of the board of trustees approved putting four candidates — Joseph DeRenzo, Karen Keller, Ali Krieger and Jay Paterno — who garnered 50 or more signatures and submitted the appropriate paperwork, on the ballot after reviewing each candidate against a screening matrix during an executive session prior to the public meeting. The screening matrix includes the materials the candidate submitted, a skills matrix, experience, commitment and service to Penn State, a background check and Code of Conduct alignment.

The subcommittee publicly went through the candidates one by one, and subcommittee members had the opportunity to object to whether a candidate is qualified. No member objected to any of the candidates. Had there been an objection, it would have required a two-thirds majority vote of the subcommittee to disqualify a candidate.

There are nine trustees elected by alumni and the terms are staggered so three expire each year. This election will have two incumbents on the ballot: Krieger and Paterno. DeRenzo and Keller both unsuccessfully ran in the 2025 alumni trustee election, and came in fifth and seventh, respectively, in the voting.

Last year, the board approved revisions to the bylaws, including adding a section to the elections appendix that states alumni trustee candidates who do not complete the requirements determined by the board office are ineligible to be nominated or elected. Therefore, write-in candidates are not allowed. Another revision added a review of the candidate’s social media and online presence as part of the background check process.

This is the second alumni trustee election under recently changed bylaws that give current trustees more say over who can and cannot be on the ballot. In 2024 the board approved new bylaws that created a nominating subcommittee that has the power to determine who is and isn’t “qualified” to be on the ballot. So far they’ve only determined one candidate, former alumni trustee Barry Fenchak, to be unqualified in 2025 and barred him from appearing on the ballot. He unsuccessfully ran a write-in campaign and later, after a legal battle, the trustees removed him from the board — which banned him from running for election again — over code of conduct violations.

Voting for the alumni trustee election begins at 9 a.m. April 20; alumni have until 9 a.m. on May 7 to cast their vote. Election results will be announced during the May 8 trustees meeting. In the 2025 trustee election, 17,720 alumni voted out of the 743,852 total eligible votes.

Penn State’s board of trustees is broken down into nine distinct groups: nine members elected by alumni, six members appointed by the governor, six members elected by agricultural societies, six members elected by the board representing business and industry, three at-large trustees, one student trustee, one academic trustee and the immediate past president of the Penn State Alumni Association. Five members are also ex-officio by right of their office, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi, Secretary of Agriculture Russell C. Redding, Secretary of Education Carrie Rowe and Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources Cynthia A. Dunn.

Halie Kines

Centre Daily Times

Halie Kines is a former journalist for the Centre Daily Times.