Board of Directors

Michelle Malin is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and an Associate Professor with MacEwan University’s School of Business.

Prior to joining MacEwan in 2011, Michelle worked as an auditor with Deloitte, a large, international accounting firm where she worked on audits for a variety of public and private corporations in Alberta. Later in her accounting career, Michelle specialized in income tax where she provided tax and estate planning services to individual and corporate clients.

At MacEwan, Michelle teaches taxation and financial accounting courses. Michelle also teaches post-graduate courses for the accounting profession in the CPA Professional Education Program (PEP).

Dr. Natalia Khinkanina is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and an Assistant Professor with MacEwan University’s School of Business.  

Natalia is committed to innovative research and teaching and has several years of experience as an auditor and accountant. Before joining MacEwan University in 2019, Natalia was an Assistant Professor with Concordia University of Edmonton and a Treasurer of Concordia’s Faculty Association. 

Specific teaching and research interests include financial and management accounting, including managerial aspects for non-for-profit organizations. Natalia is an active CPA mentor, providing updates on the students’ progress via the CPA Practical Experience Reporting Tool (PERT). 

I am an Assistant Professor of Classics in the Humanities Department and the current Discipline Coordinator for Classics which requires me to be aware of the Collective Agreement’s provisions regarding workload and faculty and sessional hiring. Prior to coming to MacEwan, I was a sessional instructor at several universities; as a result, I have experiences of being contingent faculty and a junior, tenure-track faculty member. In addition to committee work at MacEwan, I have also chaired committees for my national discipline and was a union representative during my graduate degrees.

As representative for FAS, my goal is to represent the needs of all faculty ranks (from sessional to full professor) by bringing in my experience as a sessional instructor and junior faculty member along with my knowledge of the CA when discussing workload, teaching and research support, and job security. In addition to representing all faculty ranks, as FAS representative my job is to represent the entirety of the faculty by being aware of the particular teaching, research, and service expectations and needs of the Arts and Sciences. I have contacts across the faculty and am thus able to respond to the individual needs of each area of the faculty.

Jennifer Spencer is a long term Sessional in the Theatre Department. She is a Director, Actor, Playwright, and voice and text coach. She has served as the Music Theatre Performance Sessional Representative on the Department of Theatre Council for over three years, and served two elected terms as the Sessional Representative for FFAC Council.

Jennifer also served on the formation of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications' Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Committee. Her article "Performance Arts Training in the Era of #metoo" won Forum Article of the Year from VASTA, the Voice and Speech Trainers Association.

Jennifer was the first woman, and artist, to chair the board of Workshop West Playwrights’ theatre, and is one of the few women and artists across Canada to do so.

I have been a sessional instructor at MacEwan University since 1993 teaching with the Disability Studies and the Educational Assistant programs.

I am currently President of the Alberta Disability Workers Association where I have been a board member since its inception in 2010. As a MacEwan Alumni, I take great pride in the high-quality educational experience that we provide our students. This can only be achieved with stellar faculty at our foundation.

We need a strong association which advocates and supports faculty to do their best work.

Leanne Topola graduated with a BA and BScN from the University of Saskatchewan in 1996. She spent many years as a community health nurse working with diverse populations in different contexts in Saskatchewan and Alberta. She achieved a career goal of being granted a Master of Nursing degree from Athabasca University in 2012.

Leanne has been teaching in the MacEwan Bachelor of Science in Nursing program since 2009. In those years she has taught clinical, lab and theory in years one, three and four. Collaboratively working with students is her passion while her teaching practices embody learning-centered approaches.

Jacqueline Devlin received her law degree from the University of Calgary in 1992. She was admitted to the Law Society of Alberta in 1993 and continues to be an active member (pro bono) of the bar.

Jacqueline has been an instructor at MacEwan University in the Paralegal Studies Program, School of Business since 1999. She has always had a keen interest in Employment Law and teaches both Employment Law and Legal Issues in the Workplace courses. She is also very interested in alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and has taken mediation and negotiation training with the Alberta Arbitration and Mediation Society.

Jacqueline has experience working with a variety of boards and tribunals. She has worked with the Metis Settlements Appeal Tribunal, the Fort Chipewyan Youth Justice Committee and is a Panel Member on the Community and Social Services Appeals Panels. She has been a board member of the Edmonton Social Planning Council and has been the President and Chair of two other non-profit organizations.

Michael Buhr teaches science and math in MacEwan’s University Preparation program.  Michael served as Head Instructor of University Preparation from 2017 to 2020.  As Head Instructor, he was a member of various hiring committees and coordinated the submission of Science 30 for approval by the Provincial Academic Upgrading Committee.       

Michael has been a member of Academic Governance Council (2016 – 2018), Academic Governance Council Executive Committee (2016 – 2018) and Academic Planning and Priorities Committee (2018-2019).   

Michael is currently a member of the School of Continuing Education Executive Committee and Joint Work Site Health & Safety Committee.   

Robyn Hall has been an academic librarian at MacEwan University since 2012, leading scholarly communications initiatives and working with various social science programs to provide information literacy instruction and research skills training. In addition to a Master of Library and Information Science from Western University, she holds a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Guelph where her research focused on union engagement with marginalized communities, and the feminization of labour. She also has experience working as a sessional faculty member in Red Deer prior to commencing her current tenured position. In recent years, she has served on several university-wide committees while also holding leadership positions on MacEwan’s Library Leadership Group, MacEwan’s former Undergraduate Student Research Initiative, the Alberta Association of Academic Libraries, and the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries.

Robyn is eager to increase her involvement in the Faculty Association to actively represent her Professional Resource Faculty peers and work with colleagues across the institution to best serve the association’s members. She is particularly interested in issues related to broader recognition of non-traditional research outputs arising from academic work, enhancing FA member engagement, and increasing equity among underrepresented groups working in academic faculty positions.