Recipient of a 2025-2026 Alumni Student Leadership Award, Matthew Heans is deeply committed to supporting young students and teens in the community, and to making a difference on campus. Throughout his studies in the faculty of arts, Matthew has served as a lead volunteer with the Promise Partnership, literacy instructor with L’Ami Learning Academy and as a tutor at the Teen Resource Centre. Among many volunteer roles on campus, has also served as food coordinator with the UNB SRC, president and founder of the UNBSJ Debate Club and student senator on the UNBSJ Senate.
What inspired you to enrol in UNB’s Faculty of Arts?
UNB Saint John’s Faculty of Arts is an excellent example of a small, tight-knit program that excels in fostering community while also instilling the core fundamentals of a university education in its students. These selling points are what first attracted me to UNBSJ. Its passionate and positively brilliant professors are what convinced me to stay. J.P Lewis and Patrick Eldridge, in particular, spring to mind as being among the best and brightest of what the Saint John campus has to offer. Their eagerness to educate has been the lifeblood of my university experience. Without their devout pedagogy, many students, including myself, would likely fall through the cracks. It is teachers like these and the learning environment that they help to cultivate which first drew me to UNB Saint John’s Faculty of Arts.
What has been the most rewarding or exciting part of your academic studies?
The chance to come into class everyday at UNB and sit shoulder to shoulder with like-minded students from diverse backgrounds has been a blessing. From discussing the implications of Aristotle’s Physics for our conceptions of space and time to arguing over the merits of John A. Macdonald’s legacy, my peers have consistently taught me how little I actually know. Coming from as far abroad as India and Nigeria, they have brought the world into this small town Canadian boy’s backyard. To name a few, the likes of Aiden Manuel, Emily Wheaton, Himanshu Sharma, Joseph Albert, Khushi Chauhan, Nathan Law, Noah LeBlanc, Ayush Bhosale, and innumerable other future and past UNB alumni have been formative influences in my life. If it were not for their continued contributions to my thought, I often wonder how far I ever would have strayed from my own initial cave of ignorance. Much of my limited wisdom and success must necessarily therefore be said to be only an extension of their own.
How do you stay involved in student life on campus?
My friends around campus might say that I stay involved by making a nuisance of myself. Admittedly, there might even be some truth to that. Since enrolling at UNB Saint John in the fall of 2023, I have been a fairly incessant part of the student community. Between working in a number of capacities for UNB Saint John’s Students' Representative Council to founding and presiding over the UNB Saint John Debate Club, I like to think that I am everywhere at UNB Saint John. Hubris aside, my work on campus has always, at heart, championed my interests and the things I care about. My passions for advocacy and public speaking, among other things, are what stir me to stay involved in student life on campus. They have driven me to pursue diverse opportunities, such as working as the SRC food coordinator for 2024-2025 and volunteering as a learning coordinator for the Promise Partnership from 2023-2024. At base though, I think that as long as you have the enthusiasm to get involved, regardless of where your passions lie, you inevitably find your niche.
How has receiving the Alumni Student Leadership Award positively impacted your UNB experience?
The Alumni Student Leadership Award has substantially helped to alleviate the financial burden that has come with the final semester of my BA. As we all know all too well, university is not cheap and scholarship support seems to be especially fickle, for me, of late. Given that I am also currently looking at moving out of my parents’ house and am in the process of applying for law school, every dollar saved counts. So, this generous gift from the UNB Alumni Association is highly fortuitous to say the least.
What makes you Proudly UNB?
I am proud to count myself among such a rarefied multitude of extraordinarily brilliant, ambitious, and conscientious individuals. I am furthermore proud to say that the University of New Brunswick has allowed me to partake in this powerful play so that I may contribute a verse. Or if you do not care for Whitman, to put it simply, I am proudly UNB insofar as UNB represents the best and brightest of what New Brunswick, Canada has to offer.
What are your future plans once you’ve completed your undergraduate degree?
Upon graduation, I will be, if all goes according to plan, attending a Juris Doctor program at a law school somewhere in Canada, provided they will have me. My interests, at present, lie at the intersection of corporate law and estate planning. Ultimately, I hope to practice law in New Brunswick as a barrister and solicitor as to make some minimal positive contribution to the well-being of my province and my country. The details of which I will leave up to the universe to decide.
How do you hope to continue staying connected to UNB in the future as an alum?
Later in life, I would relish the opportunity to return to the University of New Brunswick as either a graduate student or lecturer. Philosophy, political science and law are all fields that I hope to explore further. Outside of future academic pursuits, I also hope to one day to get the chance to repay the substantial scholarship funding that UNB has provided me with by funding a scholarship for someone else in turn. Of course, these are all just fledgling ideas; only time will tell when and how UNB and I will meet again, but it certainly seems fated to be.
