Utah’s longest-serving university president among those currently in office announced this week that she’s retiring.
Bethami Dobkin, who has led Westminster University since July 2018, will step down at the end of the academic year this spring, capping eight years at the helm of the private liberal arts school in Salt Lake City’s foothills.
In a statement Thursday, Dobkin called it “an immense privilege” and “the honor of a lifetime” to serve in the role over the small 27-acre university of about 1,200 students.
“Westminster will always hold a special place in my heart,” she added.
Her leadership extended over a challenging time for higher education in the country and in Utah, including navigating online education during the COVID-19 pandemic and now battling major cuts to federal research funding. But being the leader of a private institution gave her a unique platform.
She stood out among Utah’s higher education leaders when she alone signed onto an April letter condemning President Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” attempts to control higher education.
“While we welcome a national conversation about the value of higher education, this particular attack is motivated by political gain,” she said at the time.
Dobkin similarly made a stand when she doubled down on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs at Westminster after state lawmakers eliminated those efforts at Utah public institutions.
Preston Chiaro, chair of Westminster University’s board of trustees, called her dedication “visionary.”
The board will move forward immediately with a national search for her replacement. That new leader is expected to be named in the spring before Dobkin leaves.
After spending 40 years in higher education, Dobkin said her retirement will include spending more time in California with her family.
(Justin Hackworth) Westminster University President Bethami Dobkin will retire from her post at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. She is currently the longest-serving university president in the state.
Before coming to Westminster, she previously served for ten years as the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Saint Mary’s College of California, a private Catholic school. She was a professor of communication for 18 years at the University of San Diego, another private research institution.
She also directed the public debate program at the University of Massachusetts and taught at Hartford University, the University of Connecticut and the College of Our Lady of the Elms.
Overall, Dobkin’s eight-year tenure is impressive at a time when Utah’s higher education leadership has seen remarkable turnover. The average tenure for current sitting presidents in Utah is 3.3 years. The national average is 5.9 years, according to the most recent survey from the American Council on Education.
She slightly outpaces Utah Valley University’s President Astrid Tuminez in presidential tenure; Tuminez started a few months after Dobkin, in September 2018.
Dobkin isn’t the longest serving in recent state history, though. In more contemporary years, that distinction belongs to Stan Albrecht, who spent just shy of 12 years leading Utah State University. The longest-ever serving president in Utah history is Elmer George “E.G.” Peterson, who for 29 years also led USU.
By comparison, though, USU is currently without a permanent president after its most recent leader, Elizabeth “Betsy” Cantwell, stepped down after a brief 18 months. Separately, in St. George, Utah Tech University’s new president has only been in office for a few months.
National experts have said that churn is due to increasing pressure on presidents, including state budget cuts, attacks on DEI and a wide expansion of the role itself.
In Dobkin’s time as president, for instance, she faced major pushback from students in 2019 over a proposed 8.5% tuition increase. And she took heat over how the school was responding to allegations of sexual harassment, including a now-dismissed 2023 lawsuit filed by a women’s soccer player.
A big challenge for Westminster, too, is that it has the highest tuition — $33,000 with fees for a full year — in the state. When she started as president, Dobkin pointed to that as a hurdle for enrollment, which has dipped.
“We’re in a particularly interesting time for higher education where the idea of liberal arts is being seen as inaccessible, which is unfortunate,” she said then.
Dobkin said she planned to “counter that mindset” by improving and better promoting the school’s financial aid program, which annually awards more than $57 million in scholarships, grants, loans and work-study offers. And she wanted to find more community donors to contribute to the university.
Throughout her tenure, she has raised about $70 million for the school.
She also oversaw the transition of Westminster from a college to a university, with the addition of two new doctoral programs. And she launched new student teams in mountain biking, climbing, and speech and debate.
Dobkin also opened a community clinic, which offers free mental health care to Utahns while also providing supervised clinical training hours for students in the school’s master of clinical mental health counseling program.