Sarah Clancy

Associate Professor, Health, Aging & Society

Dr. Sarah Clancy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Aging, and Society and the Social Psychology Program. Sarah is an award-winning educator who received the MSU Excellence in Teaching Award (Faculty of Social Sciences) in April 2022. Sarah completed her PhD in Sociology at McMaster University, studying the impact of pop culture and dress styles on the development of children’s identity. Her interests in children are reflected in a course she has developed, titled Small Worlds: Children and Childhood (SOC PSY 3ZZ3).  Sarah's interests in deviance and crime are reflected in another course she created for a fourth-year seminar course on the social psychology of media and crime (SOC PSY 4F03). Sarah regularly teaches, instructs and supervises the original research projects that Social Psychology students complete in their final year in the program (SOC PSY 4ZZ6), teaches courses in the Department of Health, Aging and Society on health & society (HLTH AGE 1AA3), developed and teaches a course on health and incarceration (HLTH AGE 3T03), as well as supervises fourth year Health, Aging and Society and PNB students completing their independent thesis in their final year of study. Sarah is also the Faculty Advisor for the McMaster Undergraduate Journal of Social Psychology and the Faculty Advisor/Supervisor for the Social Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference.

As a teaching-stream professor, Sarah has a keen interest in teaching and learning pedagogies, as well as fostering opportunities for student research, engagement, and skill building.  Currently, Sarah is working as part of a collaborative student-partnership team of former and current McMaster students on a MacPherson PLT Grow Grant funded project (2025/2026), “Opening Doors: Expanding Opportunities for Conference Participation and Research Inquiry Beyond the Social Psychology Program,”  to further develop and expand the undergraduate conference in Social Psychology to include students from the Department of Health, Aging, and Society.  The team consists of 5 former students from the Social Psychology Program - Shaina McDonald, Claudia Meneguzzi, Raisa Jadavji, Megan Lee and Paula Sheron Queiroz, two current Health, Aging, and Society undergraduate students – Jess Downer and Katie Lewis, and two current Social Psychology undergraduate students – Chelsea Zhang and Molly Taylor.  The team is excited to work collaboratively together on this expanded conference initiative! The pre-conference workshop and conference event are forthcoming in March 2026, along with a feedback exit survey to evaluate the conference experience.

The conference was first developed in 2021 and funded by a MacPherson Institute Teaching & Learning PALAT (Priority Areas for Teaching and Learning) Research Grant which supported the first-annual student-run Social Psychology conference in January 2022, along with a pre-conference workshop, and exit feedback survey to evaluate the conference. Sarah (PI) worked with former social psychology graduate, Shaina McDonald (co-investigator/RA), as well as fourth-year undergraduate students (at the time), Claudia Meneguzzi and Raisa Jadavji.  In 2023, Sarah supervised four exceptional students in the Social Psychology Program who developed and organized the conference as direct research experience in the course, SOC PSY 3K03: Research Experience. Alison Rogers, Monserrat Ramirez Ruvalcaba, Shaza Zahir Hassan and Sophia Cupello were supported by the original research and conference team members, Claudia Meneguzzi, Raisa Jadavji, and Shaina McDonald. The pre-conference workshop and conference were both held in March 2023.  In 2024, Sarah supervised two additional exceptional students, Megan Lee and Paula Sheron Queiroz, who also developed and organized the conference as direct research experience in the course, SOC PSY 3K03: Research Experience.  Megan and Paula were also supported by the original research and conference team members. The pre-conference workshop and conference were both held in March 2024.

To learn more about the first conference offering in 2022, please see the link below for a publication by Shaina, Claudia, Raisa, and Sarah in the International Journal for Students as Partners on their experiences developing the conference and lessons learned that helped inform future conference offerings:  https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v9i1.5844

In 2024/2025, Sarah continued working with Megan Lee and Paula Sheron Queiroz on a capstone specific resource guide, created for and by students.  The student-centered, free, supplementary capstone-specific ‘how-to’ resource guide will be created for students and by students, filled with tips, hints, relatable stories, shared experiences, and lessons learned as shared by former students who completed their own capstone thesis projects. Megan and Paula were involved in all aspects of the project, receiving credit as co-editors.  Sixteen former students shared their lived experiences and tips that were included in the final resource guide.  The resource guide is now being used in Sarah’s section of SOC PSY 4ZZ6 int he 2025/2026 academic year.

Sarah seeks to offer a range of research and learning opportunities for both current and former students. In the 2021-2022 academic year, Sarah developed and launched a new initiative, a core skill-building non-credit certificate of completion workshop series, called the ‘ABC’s Skills Workshop and Certificate of Completion’. The ‘ABC’s’ refer to the following: A - Academic writing and article reading; B - Building communication and collaboration skills in groups; and, C – Critical thinking skills. The workshop has been held since 2021, with the most recent offering in November 2024.  Former students Jessica Farshait and Mikayla Voets have been with the workshop as facilitators/moderators since its inception in 2021.  In Fall 2024, Rebecca Levinson, a current Health, Aging and Society student, joined the team as a facilitator/moderator.

Sarah's other research and teaching interests include: health and health care; social deviance, social problems and criminology; social psychology of crime; health, aging and well-being; health inequalities; health and incarceration; and historical conceptions of aging. Sarah has taught numerous courses over the years in these subject areas. Additionally, Sarah is a trained qualitative and quantitative researcher.