Sarah Powell (School Psychology, Ph.D., ’17) will do a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Learning and Academic Achievement at NYU Langone
Sarah Powell, a School Psychology student who will receive her Ph.D. in May, won a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Learning and Academic Achievement, a part of NYU Langone Medical Center’s Child Study Center.
This will be the second time for Powell to work with NYU Langone. She did an externship with its Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and will be the pediatric neuropsychology fellow in the new academic year.
“The majority of my work will be clinical work and I will spend it completing neuropsychological evaluations for children with neurodevelopmental issues such as learning disabilities and Autism, and congenital and acquired brain issues such as tumors or traumatic brain injury,” said Powell. She will also attend neurology and child psychiatry grand rounds, case conferences, child and adolescent psychology seminars there.
Currently, she is a psychology intern at The School at Columbia University, where she consults with parent, teacher, and students, develop and work on prevention programs, have a large caseload for counseling, and complete psycho-educational assessments.
In addition to her work at NYU and The School at Columbia University, Powell had completed externships and internships at Lenox Hill hospital Center for Attention and Learning, Mt. Sinai Hospital Adolescent Health Center, and the Jewish Child Care Association of New York during her doctoral studies.
Her dissertation, titled Exploring Strategy Use for Multiplication Problem Solving in Engineering Students, focused on adult math achievement in relation to their math strategy usage. The study explored the relationship between math strategy use and execution and compares it to measures of both math and general academic performance. Overall, she found that the ability to generate strategies and execute embedded strategies was predictive of both math and overall college academic achievement above and beyond entrance exam measures and performance in prerequisite courses.
On her choice of coming to Fordham for graduate study, she attributed to Fordham’s stellar reputation in the field of school psychology. “When people find out that you were trained at Fordham, they just trust that your training has been excellent,” Powell said. “There is no replacement for that.” She also holds a master’s degree in education with an emphasis in therapeutic interventions and a professional diploma in School Psychology from Fordham.
Powell, who is originally from the Philadelphia area, enjoys cooking and spending time with family and friends. In the future, she hopes to obtain American Board of Professional Psychology certification in clinical neuropsychology as well as the pediatric subspecialty. Ultimately, she would like to work in an outpatient neurology, or pediatric hospital clinic focusing on pediatric neuropsychological evaluations.
This post was written by Larry Tung, a CLAIR doctoral student.
