- Sylvia Torti has begun her inaugural year as president of Salt Lake City's Westminster University.
- Torti served as the dean of the University of Utah Honors College for over a decade.
- The private school's new president lists boosting enrollment and connecting with Utah's business community as key priorities.
Wednesday was the first day of 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 claimed 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 number one 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.”
Torti’s vision: Boosting enrollment — an& engaging with Utah industry
Westminster University has reportedly experienced enrollment declines over the past decade, including in the years following the pandemic.
After taking the Westminster reins, Torti began articulating her vision of executing a sustainable business model at the school, prioritizing boosting student enrollment. Getting more students matriculating at Westminster “is at the top of my thinking right now,” she said.
The first thing the new president and her team plan to do to boost enrollment is leaning into what’s already working.
“We’ve seen enrollment growth the last couple of years through new recruitment avenues, and we’ll continue that work,” said Torti. “Our nursing program and our undergraduate business program are both experiencing growth, and we’ll grow on those as well.”
It’s also vital, she added, to listen to educational partners across the state to best know what would-be students are seeking in higher learning. “I plan to meet with K-12 educators and hear from them what young people want and will need in the years to come.”
“In my position, I’m not just thinking about the students who arrived this year. I should be thinking about the students who are coming to us five years and eight years from now, and making sure we’re developing the right educational models for them.”
Westminster is also seeing enrollment growth coming from transfer students, she added. The school is also enlarging its relationship with Salt Lake Community College, while offering a new transfer scholarship program that largely targets first-generation college students.
Meanwhile, Torti is anxious to engage with Utah’s business community, nonprofits and governmental agencies to ensure that Westminster students are graduating with the skills needed across Utah’s workforce.
“The role of an institution is to help an individual find an education, but it also has a role in the state and in the community,” she said. “Westminster serves Utah with no tax dollars. So we are providing employees and workforce to the state of Utah without actually asking for (public funds).”
Torti sees no frontrunner in the ongoing national higher ed debate about whether the liberal arts or the sciences should anchor instruction. “We need both … every student needs and deserves a broad general education."
When asked about surveys revealing sizable numbers of Americans losing confidence in the value of higher education, Torti is quick to acknowledge that the cost of a college education is significant. “But the premium of higher education,” she said, “is incontrovertible.”
Research affirms the long-term economic benefits of earning a college degree.
“But there’s also a life premium,” noted Torti. “We know that a higher education degree is correlated with better health, longer longevity, more stable relationships and more community engagement. People with higher education vote at a higher rate, and they tend to be more philanthropically generous.”
Torti will be officially inaugurated as Westminster University’s 20th president on Sept. 11 at 1 p.m. at the school’s Richer Commons. The public is welcome to attend, but RSVP is encouraged.