A new president takes the helm
COA Board of Trustees Vice Chair Hank Schmelzer, from left, COA President Sylvia Torti, Board Vice-Chair Marthann Samek, and Board Chair Beth Gardiner celebrate Torti's investiture as COA's eighth leader; photo by Malek Hinnawi ’25/Ramad LLC.
By Rob Levin
An energetic and heartful ceremony marked the inauguration of Sylvia Torti as the eighth president of College of the Atlantic. Hundreds gathered on the North Lawn October 20, 2024 to cheer Torti on as she laid out her vision of COA as the future of education. The day included keynote speeches from Deep Springs College President Emeritus and University of Utah Professor Emeritus L. Jackson Newell and University of Utah Inaugural Dean of the School for Cultural & Social Transformation Kathryn Bond Stockton, as well as an original poem written for the occasion and read by poet Eloise Schultz ’16.
“Sylvia Torti is an educator, a nurturer, instinctively advancing everyone around her,” Newell said. “Today, we celebrate the appointment of a new leader, someone who lives the narrative, breathes the spirit of art and science, and knows the competing demands of both discipline and freedom. A perfect match.”
Torti, an accomplished writer, ecologist, and innovative academic leader, was invested by COA Board of Trustees Co-Vice Chairs Marthann Samek and Hank Schmelzer, with Schmelzer placing a medallion with the COA seal around Torti’s neck. The seal includes three runes representing humans, earth, and water.
“COA—with our tradition of being a benchmark for change and addressing the challenges facing current and future generations—represents the future of education,” Torti said. “Here at COA, we fulfill our yearning to connect with one another and with the marvelously diverse more-than-human world. Ultimately, it is our sharp and adaptable, ecological minds, shaped by this connected education, that will allow us to discover new ways to flourish collectively.”
Also involved in the ceremony were COA Provost Ken Hill, Associate Dean of Faculty Kourtney Collum, trustee and member of the presidential search committee Cynthia Baker, and Board of Trustees Chair Beth Gardiner.
Torti previously served as dean of the Honors College at University of Utah, where she initiated and implemented a vision for globally oriented, integrated curricula in ecology, health, and human rights. Before that, she was the director of the university's remote, 400-acre Bonderman Field Station.
“Today marks a beginning, but in reality, it’s just a continuum of everything that COA stands for,” Gardiner said. “In a complicated and often confusing world, the values of COA are more important than ever, and we feel extremely fortunate that we found, in our new president, someone who feels our values as strongly and passionately as Sylvia does.”
Fall term All College Meeting moderator Keenan Ovrebo‑Welker ’27 provided opening remarks, followed by Schultz’s reading of One Small Place.
Torti has published multiple scientific research papers, research and opinion pieces on methods of pedagogy, multiple short stories and essays, and two novels: Cages (Schaffner Press, 2017), winner of the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature for a novel, and The Scorpion’s Tail ( Curbstone Press, 2005), winner of the Miguel Mármol Award for a novel.
Past COA presidents in attendance included Steve Katona, Darron Collins ’92, and Andrew Griffiths. The audience included dozens of Torti’s friends and family members, along with trustees, alumni, students, staff, and faculty. Attendees enjoyed a reception in the Newlin Gardens following the ceremony.
Earlier in October, a southern Magnolia tree was planted on the seaside lawn of The Turrets, COA’s iconic, castle-like administrative building, in honor of Torti’s inauguration. COA Head Gardener Barbara Meyers ’89 said the species selection was a daring but well-reasoned experiment as the college anticipates climate change on campus.
Torti, who is from a bicultural Latinx background, has lived and worked globally. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences and a BA from Earlham College. She began her tenure at COA on July 1, 2024.
Torti is joined by her partner, Scott Woolsey, a blind triathlete who has achieved significant milestones in his athletic career. He secured the title of Ironman 70.3 World Champion in 2021 and went on to become the Ironman 140.6 World Champion in 2022. For the past several years, he has been teaching first-year colloquia and serving on the leadership team to design integrative first-year experiences at the University of Utah. He is a motivational speaker and a farm-to-table food expert.
One Small Place
By Eloise Schultz ’16
Written for the inauguration of COA President Sylvia Torti and read by the author at the ceremony on October 20, 2024
When the priests sold this property
for a dollar to the college, do you think
they knew what would come to be here?
One might think that they lived in
unobtrusive ways, in days of solitude
and silent prayer, but that’s the trick
of the pastoral to soften
the audacity of history.
Come upstairs with me
to the library window, I’ll show you where
their giant neon cross once stood,
a beacon for boats crossing Frenchman Bay.
In its place, the first hopeful students
built a windmill, which ignited years later
from the friction of its own movement
and left a flat ring of stones which
now faces, across the bay, an array
of modern turbines, turning steadily.
Ours is the story of beautiful failures
and our faith in what follows. Every ruin
beneath your feet stings of those who arrived
and laments those who were forced to leave;
those who cut the paths and laid the tracks,
paved the roads and stacked the stones
that lined the sidewalk on your first walk
to school, as someone took your hand
and held hope and grief in the other.
The earth now is as noisy as it’s ever been.
Never has it been harder to hear the calls
of birds or the commotion of insects,
the ocean’s chatter drowned out by engines
of trade, the flow of water long since turned
to the flow of money and endless interest.
But these ways of living are not inevitable.
Beneath those mountains are even older mountains.
Behind this sentence is a door we haven’t seen before.
Three miles from here, there’s a path in the forest
leading to the crumbled stones of an old estate
atop granite scraped by glaciers and glazed by fire.
A porcupine lives there, and a fox, regarding each other
from mossy dens on either side of the collapsed road.
I’ll take you there, after it rains, to smell the sweet
firs and see the few chanterelles emerging
steadily from the litter of oak leaves,
to climb carefully down the steps
and find the moldy old boot perched
atop a stump in an empty grove,
a stage in the forest’s theatre.
There’s a common ground for us here
beyond priests and robber barons,
a place where actors and audience
change places: in the classroom,
the field station, the auditorium.
Here, generosity is our greatest
asset, and our inheritance not
something owned but shared in
how we tend and attend each other.
Where a child brings a box to the
wildlife vet and removes the lid
to show a monarch butterfly
whose fragile wings are torn. So small
it is, beside the cages of bobcats
and eagles; small like that child’s hands
in one moment in time, in one small place.
Such a small thing couldn’t make a difference.
Something so small is all that makes a difference.
