In June 2013 Exeter College, Oxford announced that Trainor was the preferred candidate to succeed Frances Cairncross as rector. The College announced his formal pre-election in October 2013. Trainor took office on 1 October 2014, during the College’s 700th anniversary year. The Rector is Head of the College with oversight of all its activities. He and Exeter’s 48 Fellows constitute the Governing Body (chaired by the Rector). The Governing Body is responsible for Exeter’s staff, its student population of c.325 undergraduates and c.200 postgraduates, its finances and its buildings. A key current project is the completion – scheduled for summer 2016 – of Exeter’s Cohen Quadrangle, on Walton Street in central Oxford, the College’s largest single physical expansion in its 701-year history.