Sylvia Torti, PhD, an accomplished writer, ecologist, and innovative academic leader, is the eighth president of College of the Atlantic. From 2012 to 2023, Torti served as dean of the Honors College at the University of Utah, a liberal arts college nested within a large research institution, where she achieved ambitious goals through dedicated strategic planning, including tripling the diversity of the student body and increasing the number of out-of-state students. She also created a successful office to mentor students for nationally competitive scholarships, resulting in Rhodes, Churchill, Fulbright, Udall, Gilman, and Boren awards, and, most importantly, initiated and implemented a vision for globally oriented, integrated curricula in ecology, health, and human rights.
Torti, who is from a bicultural Latinx background and has lived and worked globally, is a collaborative leader with a passion for experiential, interdisciplinary learning, shared governance, and centering the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in today’s higher education landscape.
Prior to her 11-year tenure as Honors College dean, Torti served as the director of the 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 and curation—and coordinated research, education, outreach, and job training programs.
Torti has published multiple scientific research papers, research and opinion pieces on methods of pedagogy, and multiple short stories and essays over her 30-year career. She has also published two novels, Cages (Schaffner Press, 2017), winner of the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature, and The Scorpion’s Tail (Curbstone Press, 2005), winner of the Miguel Mármol Award. Her creative nonfiction and short stories include The Once and Future Lake (Torrey House Press, 2024), “The Smoky World” (Dark Mountain, Issue 15, 2019), and “Measuring Light in a Congo Rainforest” (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2012). She has been awarded fellowships in Spain, Brazil, and Washington State.
Torti holds a PhD from the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences and a BA from Earlham College.
