What's special about Westminster? New president Sylvia Torti is eager to offer answers

SALT LAKE CITY — Wednesday was the first day of the fall semester at Salt Lake City's Westminster University — and also a first-ever back-to-school moment for its new president.

So perhaps it was a bit unfair for a reporter to ask recently hired President Sylvia Torti what she hopes to have accomplished when her leadership tenure one day ends at the 151-year-old institution.

But Torti's a college classroom veteran. She's adept at handling curveball questions.

"I would like Westminster to be known as a top intentionally small and comprehensive university in the country," said Torti, who was selected as the school's 20th president in April, replacing longtime president Beth Dobkin.

"That would reflect that as a community we continued to deliver excellence in education — but we also evolved, as time went on, to the needs of the moment."

Westminster University, she added, is already known for being collaborative.

"So we will be known, when I leave, as a 'culture of collaboration' of folks who really have a kind of entrepreneurial mindset to be nimble."

The world is changing quickly — and academia and nimbleness are not always synonymous. But Westminster can be different, promised Torti.

"To achieve all that, we will have also experienced a successful capital campaign and new funding to help with scholarship dollars to maintain our ability to provide this education — and access to this education for great numbers of people."

Utah: A long-adopted home for Griffin Nation's new leader

While Torti may still be learning her way around Westminster's Sugar House campus (she's quickly becoming a familiar face at the student fitness center), the Ohio native has long considered Utah her home.

"Even though I wasn't born here, the roots run deep for me," she told the Deseret News.

So when Torti learned that the Westminster University presidency was opening, her heart skipped. She had long admired the school's commitment to community-based relational education. The Westminster job, she added, offered "so many elements that attract me."

"Westminster does education the right way — and by the right way I mean it has built on the right foundational values," said Torti. "It has the right opportunities for undergraduates to focus on disciplines, but also really engage in interdisciplinary work. Because that's what they're going to be doing for the rest of their lives."

Westminster's small urban campus community, she added, was another plus.

"I've watched this school for years. It's a community where everyone from the groundskeeper to the faculty members know each other by name, and they're all involved in making this place whole and educating students.

"I wanted to be part of that kind of community where everyone matters."

Torti's Beehive State introduction came in the early 1990s after she earned a bachelor's degree from Indiana's Earlham College. She headed west and enrolled at the University of Utah to complete her Ph.D. in biology.

Torti would later direct the school's Bonderman Field Station in rural southeastern Utah and also served as a conservation biologist at Red Butte Garden.

And for more than a decade (2012-2023), Torti was the dean of the University of Utah Honors College — spearheading faculty growth and student diversity, while securing a sizable budget increase for the college.

She left Utah in 2024 to become president of College of the Atlantic, a small liberal arts college in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Torti's resume stretches beyond academia. The daughter of an Argentine father and an American mother, she is also an award-winning novelist and short-story author who draws from her scientific training to inform her fiction writing.

She's the past president of Utah's Writers at Work, an organization promoting the creative writing community.

Longtime colleague and current University of Utah President Taylor Randall said Torti is a welcome "re-addition" to the state's higher education leadership community.

"As former dean of the U.'s Honors College, (Torti) brings a deep commitment to student success, engagement, and the kind of innovative leadership that will strengthen higher education in our state," said Randall in a statement following the announcement of Torti's hiring.

So why should students choose Westminster U.?

Utahns have a variety of higher education choices — ranging from large public research institutions to tiny for-profit schools. But Torti's certain Westminster University is the right choice for many college-bound Utahns deciding where to enroll.

"We are an intentionally small comprehensive university, and we're built on this understanding that we learn through relationships. … We really grow when we're in sustained relationships with one another, and that is exactly what happens here at Westminster," she said.

It's a campus, she added, where students expect to be supported, seen — and, yes, challenged.

"Our students are doing research. Our students are in the theater or in the studio. Our students are in clinics learning. And in many institutions, only some students get those opportunities."

And all students, undergraduates and graduates, experience experiential learning during their Westminster years. That's an educational model that results in better outcomes, asserted Torti.

"We have the highest four-year graduation rate in the state. Ninety percent of our graduates tell us that they are employed or in a graduate program or professional program of their choice by September of their graduating year. We are, to my knowledge, the only institution in the state that offers a fully funded sophomore study abroad program.

"We are No. 1 in the state for social and economic mobility. We are a great institution for veterans. And we were just named the best school in Utah for women."

Read the full story at Deseret News.

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