Marty Clark, PhD
Marty has a passion for inclusivity and equality and teaches courses that ask students to examine concepts of health, physical activity, physical education, and sport from historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives. His main research interests are in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) and the critical study of hockey in Canada. His PhD dissertation, "Making 'Mr. Hockey': Race, Gender, Class, and Nation in Media Representations of Gordie Howe," investigated the cultural meanings of white hockey playing men and their connection to Canadian national identity.
Breda Eubank, PhD
Breda began teaching at Mount Royal in 2009 as a sessional instructor. Over the years, Breda has taken on several different roles that include course development, coordination, and curriculum planning. Breda teaches across the department in the Common Core, Athletic Therapy, and Physical Literacy. In the community, Breda has served as President and Vice-President of the Alberta Athletic Therapists Association, member of the Regional President’s Committee of the Canadian Athletic Therapists Association, and Secretary of the Sport Medicine Council of Alberta. Breda is a member of the Canadian Professional Rodeo Sport Medicine Team. Currently, Breda is engaged with ongoing provincial quality improvement initiatives with the Bone and Joint Health Strategic Clinical Network and the Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute. Breda’s research interests include musculoskeletal health, health services quality improvement, psychometric tool development, consensus methods, economic evaluation, public policy, and rodeo research.
Jared Fletcher, PhD
Jared’s teaching interests include courses in Biomechanics, Exercise Physiology and Statistics. He obtained his PhD in Applied Muscle Physiology from the University of Calgary where he studied the relationship between tendon mechanics, muscle energetics and whole-body energy cost of running in distance runners. Prior to arriving at MRU, Jared served as the Sport Physiologist for the Canadian National Para-swimming program, where he was responsible for testing and monitoring elite Paralympic swimmers at numerous World Championships and Paralympic Games. As a Mitacs Accelerate postdoctoral fellow, Jared assessed novel ways to assess exercise-related fatigue from heart rate variability and skeletal muscle force measurements in elite athletes and led health-related research initiatives in Calgary adult hospitals. His current research integrates physiology and biomechanics to better understand skeletal muscle and tendon function during exercise in individuals across the lifespan, to best prescribe exercise and to improve exercise tolerance and performance, from clinical rehabilitation to elite athletes.
Trevor King, PhD
Trevor is an exercise physiologist who is interested in how physical activity can influence a person's health and physiological function across the lifespan. He primarily investigates how factors such as chronic disease, mental stress, and environmental stressors impact the cardiovascular system, and how exercise may mitigate any negative impacts. Trevor also looks at what changes occur in the cardiovascular system of elite athletes and under extreme exercise conditions. Trevor's teaching areas include physiology, motor learning, nutrition, and statistics.
Lynne Lafave, PhD
Dr. Lynne Lafave holds a doctorate in nutritional sciences and an active member of the Dietitians of Canada. She has a special interest in the interrelationships between nutrition behaviours, attitudes, and knowledge with a focus on individual health and organizational behaviour change. At Mount Royal University, she teaches courses in Nutrition and Health, Statistics and Research Methods, and Research Methods for Health Professionals. Dr. Lafave’s research focuses on well-being, nutrition and physical activity initiatives in the early years (3 to 5 years). She has developed the evidenced-based Creating Healthy Eating Environments Scale (CHEERS) for child care that provides evaluation and a feedback report to promote healthy child care environments. This public health initiative is a result of collaboration with early learning and care providers, the provincial health authority, Alberta Health Services — Population and Public Health, and the Government of Alberta Ministry of Children’s Services — Early Childhood Development Branch. Her community research also includes working with vulnerable families to support food literacy in preschoolers through building connections from the garden to plate. In recognition of this work, Lynne was awarded the Mount Royal University Community Engagement Award in 2019.
Robyn Madden, PhD
Dr. Madden obtained her PhD in Kinesiology at the University of Calgary in the area of nutrition, metabolism, and genetics. She has a keen interest in researching nutrition and dietary supplement use among athletic and clinical populations and has worked extensively with para athlete and rare disease populations to understand how nutrition can enhance athletic performance and aid in disease management. Given her contributions to para research, she was the recipient of the 2019 Mount Royal University Alumni Achievement Horizon Award. As she continues to expand on her research, she hopes to bring awareness to underserved clinical populations while inspiring the next generation of researchers. Outside of academics, Dr. Madden enjoys traveling, finding new restaurants with her fiancé, and jogging with her Shetland Sheepdogs, Finlay and Avie.
Jill Parnell, PhD
Chair, Department of Health and Physical Education
Dr. Parnell obtained her PhD in medical sciences at the University of Calgary researching novel nutritional therapies for obesity and associated co-morbidities. She is passionate about scholarly teaching and the promotion of undergraduate research. She maintains an active research portfolio in the field of performance nutrition and works with youth athletes, Paralympic athletes, and endurance runners. She aims to build a reciprocal relationship with the sports community ensuring that athletes directly benefit from the knowledge they help generate. Dr. Parnell is also the Faculty of Health, Community and Education Scholar in Research.
Dwayne Sheehan, PhD
Dr. Dwayne Sheehan was a Marine Warfare Officer in Her Majesty's Royal Canadian Navy before becoming a K–12 physical education teacher for 19 years. He served as the Executive Director of Calgary High School Sports, and as the CBE District Specialist for health and physical education. He is a Past President of both the Alberta Schools Athletic Association and the Health and Physical Education Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association and has been acknowledged by his peers for Distinguished Service in teacher education. Dwayne collaborates extensively with municipal recreation, parks, charities and other leisure partners. His academic and research specialization is lifespan motor development, specifically the measurement of pre-adolescent gross motor proficiency. He is an accomplished author (2 co-authored books and 3 book chapters) and has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications in international academic journals. He has received well over $600K in research funding and presented 140+ academic presentations worldwide.
Lisa Taylor, MPE, BKin, BEd
Lisa Taylor is a PhD Candidate at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, and has taught undergraduate- and graduate-level health and physical education courses at a number of universities including the University of Calgary, Mount Royal University, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Prior to teaching at the post-secondary level, Lisa enjoyed eight years teaching grades one through twelve health and physical education and successfully launched and led health promoting community development teams within two schools. Currently, Lisa is researching teacher health and well-being during the pandemic, as well as post-secondary pedagogy for health promotion in schools. Lisa is also the editor of the Runner: The Journal of the Health and Physical Education Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
Nadine Van Wyk, PhD
Program Coordinator
Nadine Van Wyk is the current Physical Literacy Coordinator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Physical Education. Nadine's PhD examined the exploration of innovative methods of program design and delivery of physical literacy in the recreation sector. Her community work and research have involved Vivo for Healthier Generations, the City of Calgary, the Calgary Catholic School Board and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Nadine's areas of interest include; curriculum design and assessment and promotion of physical literacy across the lifespan.
Heather Whelan, CSEP-CEP
Heather has been teaching at Mount Royal University since 2011 and previously taught at the University of Saskatchewan. Since completing her Master's degree, she has worked as an Exercise Physiology Consultant for the Sport Medicine and Science Council of Saskatchewan, Research Assistant at the University of Glasgow, Laboratory Coordinator in Kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan, Research Operations Lead for Alberta's Tomorrow Project at Alberta Health Services, and Laboratory Technologist in Health and Physical Education at MRU. Heather also spent many years training athletes of all ages and levels, from children to Master's athletes and from grassroots to University, National team and professional athletes.- Erin Sanderson, Administrative Assistant to the Chair
- Gisèle Marcoux, Practicum Advisor
- Lindsey Wynder, Academic Advisor (on leave)