Dr. Sean Riley has been a Rhodes scholar, a leading businessman, a successful entrepreneur, a civil servant, a standout athlete, and a recipient of the Lester B. Pearson Award. But we think the most important item on his resume is this: StFX graduate. Dr. Riley graduated from StFX in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours, and has had StFX running through his blood ever since. That’s why, when he received the offer to return to the campus as president in 1996, he jumped at the chance. It wasn’t because of a desire to relive past glories. (In his graduating year he received the Governor General’s Gold Medal for highest academic achievement and was recognized as outstanding community volunteer, outstanding male student, and male athlete of the year. Not bad.) It wasn’t because he’d achieved everything else, though one could have argued that. (After graduating, he’d been selected as Rhodes Scholar for Nova Scotia, following which he completed his Masters and Doctorate degrees from Oxford University, earned a position as policy advisor in the Trudeau government, progressed to a prominent financial role in the private sector, and, eventually, ran a mid-sized industrial company based in Montreal.) It was because he knew StFX was at an important crossroads in the school’s history, and he recognized in the offer a meaningful personal challenge and a chance to give back to the place where he’d laid his own foundation.

Since his appointment in 1996, Dr. Riley has put his own personal stamp on StFX, leading to a period of exceptional success. We’ve been consistently ranked as the top primarily undergraduate university in the country; we’ve made tremendous strides in our core mission of teaching and research; and we’ve invested heavily in all aspects of the university, garnering national attention for our efforts from publications like Macleans, which has ranked us number one five times, and The Globe and Mail, which awarded us top grades in its most recent university report card. Perhaps the strongest commentary is supplied by our own students, who in February 2009 reported the highest satisfaction of all univerisities in Canada. This feeling doesn’t go away even when students leave StFX: Our alumni support has ranked highest among Canadian universities for the past several years. Aside from guiding StFX into exciting new territory, Dr. Riley somehow finds time to serve as board member or chair of a variety of organizations, from Canada World Youth to the Association of Atlantic Universities. He’s constantly seeking ways to innovate, to improve, and to make a difference. Like we said, a true Xaverian.