Governance and Institutional Transformation: Some Lessons yet to Be Learned

From the ongoing crisis at the Pennsylvania State University, trustees everywhere are learning that they really are responsible for what goes on in athletics, and that good governance has come to be more demanding--on trustees; on administrators, faculty, and staff; and, perhaps, on external constituents--more vulnerable to internal and external pressures, and more intrusive or even invasive than anyone had cause to imagine in the past. Good governance seems suddenly to be something that everyone knows on sight and that no one had imagined before. This article presents two starkly visible cases that trustees everywhere would like to understand.