Westminster College (Utah)

Westminster College is a well-regarded private liberal arts institution in Salt Lake City, Utah’s capital. The only chartered liberal arts college in the state, it offers more than 50 undergraduate courses, and 13 graduate degree programmes.

The college comprises four schools: the School of Arts and Sciences, the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business, the School of Education, and the School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Westminster constantly site in the top tier of regional universities in the West. It has been praised for its value, career preparation and community relations in particular. Westminster’s class sizes are relatively small averaging 17 students.

Salt Lake, as many residents call the city, is comfortably the largest in Utah, and surrounded by lakes, mountains and canyons, providing all kinds of outdoor excursion opportunities. It is a co-host of the annual Sundance Film Festival.

Its National Basketball Association team, the Utah Jazz, opted against changing its name, which dates back to when the franchise was based in New Orleans, Louisiana, the birthplace of the music genre.

Around a third of Westminster students live on Westminster’s small tree-lined campus, close to the city centre.

The university’s alumni include eminent molecular biologist Richard D. Wood, whose work has largely centred on DNA damage and mutation, composer and pianist Geoff Straddling, and Kaitlyn Farrington, a snowboarding gold medallist for the US at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. A tenth of the country’s Sochi contingent studied at Westminster, and Salt Lake itself hosted the 2002 games.