Previous to her 11-year tenure as honors college dean, Torti served as the director of University of Utah’s Bonderman Field Station, a remote, 400-acre station along the Dolores River in southeastern Utah. She developed and implemented a creative vision for the nascent field station to serve natural sciences, arts, humanities, architecture, and engineering faculty and students, led strategic planning—including infrastructure development for off-grid, sustainable facilities, potable water, land management, and data collection/curation—and coordinated research, education, outreach, and job training programs.

Torti holds a PhD from the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences and a BA from Earlham College. She boasts a 30-year record of publication, including multiple scientific research papers, research and opinion pieces on methods of pedagogy, two novels, and multiple short stories and essays. Her latest novel, Cages, was published by Schaffner Press in 2017.