She’s been a field biologist studying tropical plants from the Congo to the Caribbean. She’s published two award-winning novels. And she’s been a leader in higher education, including as a dean at the University of Utah and, most recently, the president of a college in Maine.

Now, Sylvia Torti is returning to Utah, where she will take the helm of Westminster University — a small private school in Salt Lake City where her varied passions will fit perfectly with the liberal arts mission.

The university, tucked in the foothills of the Sugar House neighborhood, announced Torti’s appointment in a news release Wednesday. The news was quickly met with pomp and praise by students and alumni.

“What an impressive candidate,” said Maggie Regier, a former student body president there, in response to the school’s post on Instagram. “I am so excited, she seems like a phenomenal fit for Westminster.”

Torti will start in her new job in July, with a formal inauguration this fall. She will attend the university’s commencement ceremony on May 9 — Westminster’s 151st.

In a statement, she called it “an incredible honor” to be the school’s next leader. Torti will be the 20th president of Westminster and the third woman to lead the school. She also appears to be the first who is bicultural, having Latinx heritage.

“I’ve long admired Westminster’s unique role in the ecosystem of higher education in Utah, rooted in the liberal arts and dedicated to building meaningful lives through learning,” she added.

Torti takes over after beloved President Bethami Dobkin announced she would be retiring at the end of this spring academic term after eight years leading the university. Dobkin is the longest-serving president of those currently leading the state’s higher education institutions.

Westminster is Utah’s only independent, nonprofit private university. That comes with unique challenges.

When Dobkin started, the school had 2,477 students, including graduates and undergraduates, for fall 2018. That fell to 1,168 total for fall 2025 — a 53% drop in less than a decade — according to numbers from Westminster’s common datasets.

Declining enrollment and funding

The school acknowledged in Wednesday’s news release that Torti’s first priority will be “growing enrollment and ensuring the university’s long-term financial health.”

Enrolling fewer students means bringing in less money through tuition. Westminster carries a price tag that’s among the highest in Utah, at about $46,000 with fees annually for the average in-state student, according to estimates on its website. (Most students there, though, receive some sort of financial aid or scholarship.)

In Westminster’s most recent public financial disclosure form 990, for the fiscal year ending June 2024, the university reported about $6 million less revenue than the year before.

And it also had a negative net income of $12.5 million, indicating the amount expenses outpaced revenue for the year.

Torti will face the task of trying to right the ship as other private liberal arts colleges across the nation have closed. This week, Hampshire College in Massachusetts announced it would shutter after this fall’s semester.

Torti’s most recent experience, leading the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, would seem to position her well for the work ahead.

Torti started there in July 2024, and is credited with building new donor relationships that helped fund operational expenses and new student scholarships.

College of the Atlantic is much smaller than Westminster, with about 350 students. Its most recent 990 form shows it’s also running at a yearly deficit, with $2.4 million difference in fiscal 2024 between revenues and expenses.

The last time the College of the Atlantic turned a profit was in fiscal 2021. Newer 990s aren’t available, so it’s hard to say the economic impact Torti had on the college’s bottom line during her tenure.

According to Westminster’s 990 forms, the Utah university last operated with a profit in fiscal 2018.

The university said in its news release that Torti will help the school find its financial footing by prioritizing “expanding community partnerships, increasing fundraising [and] improving how Westminster tells its story to prospective students.”

Torti has also been directed to offer classes that better prepare students for available jobs, something the Utah Legislature has been pushing the state’s eight public colleges and universities to do, with a $60.5 million cut and reallocation process.

Fighting for DEI and democracy

Westminster currently has the highest four-year graduation rate of any college or university in the state. Among its students, 52% graduate in that standard timeframe. The next closest school is the University of Utah at 37%.

In her statement Wednesday, Torti touted the power of a degree.

“Higher education is more than the first step toward a job,” she said, “it’s about developing personal meaning for the kind of life one will lead and building capacities to use one’s talents for the common good.”

Westminster’s Board of Trustees President Preston Chiaro said Wednesday that he has “enormous confidence” in Torti. Chiaro added that she will be able to “embrace change while honoring our core mission and lead us into the future.”

Torti also has spoken out on the need for students to be prepared as educated citizens. In a 2015 op-ed in The Salt Lake Tribune, Torti wrote that “students who become involved in solving community problems when they’re young are forever invested.”

In Maine, Torti signed onto a letter last year condemning the “unprecedented” attempts by President Donald Trump to control higher education. Dobkin also signed that letter, the only higher education president in Utah to do so.

Before leading the College of the Atlantic, Torti was the dean of the University of Utah’s renowned Honors College from 2012 to 2023. For a year after that, she served as a presidential honor professor and took a sabbatical to work on novellas about three generations of her Argentine-American family, according to her academic resume.

While in the Honors College, she increased honors degree completions by 150% and increased the diversity of the student body from 15% to 30%. That work has been somewhat upended by the state Legislature’s elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs in Utah public higher education during the 2024 session.

Westminster, as a private institution, has doubled down on DEI since then.

Her past work

Torti faced some heat in her deanship at the U. when, in November 2015, she sent an email to students cheering on a specific candidate for Salt Lake City mayor. It is against Utah law to politic from a public email account, but she did not ultimately face a fine for doing so.

Before her work at the Honors College, she directed the Bonderman Field Station outside of Moab, Utah. And she served as a conservation biologist at the U.’s Red Butte Garden, focusing on rare plant species.

She has done research on tropical ecology, including completing her doctorate at the U. in 1998, based on field work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Panama and Mexico. Her work continued at the U., as she studied zebra finches and recorded their songs, which inspired her writing.

Torti has published literary pieces in journals and anthologies. Her two novels “Cages” and “The Scorpion’s Tail” both received national recognition. She has explored the intersection of humans with the natural world and is often called “a literary scientist.”

She earned her bachelor’s degree at Earlham College in Indiana.

In a statement sent to the students, staff and faculty at her college in Maine on Wednesday, Torti said her decision to leave there is “deeply personal.”

“Utah has been home for me for more than 30 years,” she said. “The chance to return, to be close to my son, my community of friends and the natural environments that have shaped me, felt like a calling I was compelled to follow.”