Sarah Powell

Sarah R. Powell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Special Education at The University of Texas at Austin and Associate Director of the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk. Her research, teaching, and service focus on mathematics, particularly for students who experience mathematics differently.

Powell is currently Principal Investigator (PI) of an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) efficacy grant (RAAMPS) related to word-problem solving at Grade 4. Powell is also PI of SPIRAL, an IES grant which works collaboratively with Grade 4 and 5 teachers who provide mathematics instruction to students with mathematics difficulty. Powell is Co-PI of STAIR 2.0 (funded by IES) in which the team works with middle school special education math teachers and SCALE (funded by the US Department of Education) in which the team is replicating a fraction intervention in Grades 4-8. Powell collaborates on Math Words, as IES development grant about mathematics vocabulary. She also assists with a word-problem project funded as a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to Querium. To help create the next generation of researchers focused on mathematics, Powell is PI of a doctoral leadership grant (LIME) funded by Office of Special Education Programs. Powell was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2019.

Powell understands all of these efforts are a team effort, and she thanks her project leads, graduate students, research assistants, and research collaborators as well as the teachers and students who participate in these projects.