If you’ve ever sobbed in your car after watching a high-school rowing regatta, Sarah Cushnie has been there.  

The fifth-year McMaster student-athlete and iBioMed student has been on the varsity women’s rowing team for two years, serving as team captain in the fall term and currently as president of the McMaster Rowing Club.  

She’s dedicated to the team, and to giving back: An advocate for inclusion and equity in STEM and athletics, she mentors women in engineering and works with McMaster’s LGBTQ2SIA+ Athletic Advocacy Group to create safe spaces and connect queer athletes. Through the Leander Boat Club (where McMaster’s rowing teams train), she helps at free “Learn to Row” days for the public, including one aimed at BIPOC individuals that’s run through the Colour the Trail initiative.  

Also through Leander, she organizes training for athletes from three high schools, and coaches them twice a week – a substantial commitment that’s brought Cushnie a lot of enjoyment this year.  

“Watching them not just gain the skills on the water, but also gain the confidence, and the perseverance, has been incredible,” Cushnie said.  

On May 11, she got to watch the kids at their first regatta, where one of their boats won. “I was so proud of them,” she said. “I bawled my eyes out on the way home.”  

Cushnie has a lot to be proud of herself – in the last year, she’s earned an OUA silver medal and, with her rowing doubles partner, Nathalie Hilbert, was named co-MVPs of the women’s rowing team and placed third at the Canadian University Rowing Championships.  

But what she’s most proud of, she says, is her work in the McMaster and Hamilton community.  

She cares a lot about helping others, particularly those who might be struggling – because she knows from firsthand experience that nobody has it together all the time.  

Battling imposter syndrome

Cushnie came to McMaster for the Integrated Biomedical Engineering & Health Sciences (iBioMed) program and the varsity cross-country team.  

After being top of her class in high school, she found herself battling imposter syndrome in university.  

“When I entered first year, it seemed like everyone I knew had won [an engineering scholarship], and I had not…. I was like, ‘everyone is better than me. Everyone has their stuff figured out. And I’m just sitting here,’” Cushnie said.  

“I struggled a lot… with my mental health, with grades and academics and balancing it all,” she said.  

Cushnie credits her mentors at Mac for helping her get through it: like upper year student Andrew D’Elia, who was her mentor in first year, and Dr. Hatem Zurob, chair of materials engineering department, who appointed her to the Materials Fellowship program, where she got a research position working under Dr. Bosco Yu and Dr. Kyla Sask. “They were instrumental in me finding my voice and my positions within McMaster engineering.”  

Cushnie is thriving in school once again: She’s specializing in Materials and Biomedical Engineering, with a minor in Medical and Biological Physics. She’s an iBioMed ambassador, vice president of engagement (and past president) of the Materials Science and Engineering Society, and leads review sessions for core materials engineering courses. She has volunteered at events including the iBioMed Design Like A Girl Design-A-Thon and the Empower Girls Leadership Camp to further inspire women to pursue engineering. Currently, she’s spending the summer doing research in Tohid Didar’s lab.  

Finding her community at McMaster has also made all the difference in enabling her to thrive. After a series of injuries, Cushnie switched from cross-country to rowing in her third year. As part of the rowing team, she’s found lifelong friends, an incredibly inclusive environment, and even more opportunities to get involved.  

One of her rowing teammates, Sarah Oresnik, co-founded the McMaster LGBTQ2SIA+ Athletic Advocacy Group (LAAG) in September 2023, with the goal of making Athletics and Recreation more inclusive for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community on campus. “It seemed like a really cool initiative,” Cushnie said.  

“It’s not that I never felt comfortable on previous sports teams,” she said. The cross-country team was great, but the rowing team was exceptionally inclusive. “All of a sudden you’re in an intentionally safe space and it feels like all the walls come crashing down. Walls you didn’t even know were there.”  

Cushnie is LAAG’s vice-president of events. In that role, she’s organized climbing and yoga events; a drag show; fundraisers for local queer organizations; and facilitated their participation in a Pride 5K last fall. Ultimately, the events “provide that opportunity for queer athletes to have that space to connect,” she said.  

“I want to give other students that opportunity as much as possible.”  

Community impact

Cushnie has become one of those scholarship award winners she once felt intimidated by – her awards with the Faculty of Engineering include the Denton Coates Memorial Scholarship, the Ronald K. Ham Memorial Prize, and the Stanley Robertson Scholarship.  

But the accolades she’s proudest of are the ones that reflect her community impact, whether that’s helping young athletes learn to row or helping women in engineering with their resumes or networking skills.  

In April, she received the McMaster Athletics Les Prince Award, which honours a student-athlete who has demonstrated exceptional leadership and community service through outreach.  

“Community is so important to who I am,” she said. “In first year, I was kind of struggling to find who those people were. This was made extra difficult by having first year online due to COVID-19.”  

Now, she’s learned: “Just find your people and everything will be OK…. find the people in your life that support you, that make you feel comfortable being yourself, that make you feel at peace.”  

One of her favourite things about McMaster is the extraordinary feeling of being surrounded by so many like-minded, but diverse, individuals: “People who are all aspiring towards a goal, who are working towards making the world a better place and getting the most out of themselves that they can,” Cushnie said.  

“University is a really unique time. We’re surrounded by so many people, from so many different backgrounds. You can learn so much from them.”