Powell has offered a diverse repertoire of courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels at the following institutions: University of North Carolina (Environmental Justice course, as Graduate Teaching Fellow); Appalachian State University, Department of Anthropology and Honor’s College; Cornell University (course cross-listed with Society for Humanities and Anthropology); National Dong Hwa University (course cross-listed with Indigenous Studies and Environment/Sustainability); and Taipei Medical University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

Her teaching expertise lies in Political Ecology; critical Native American/Indigenous Studies; Environmental Anthropology; Medical Anthropology; Social Theory; Engaged/Collaborative Methodologies; and upper-level courses in Energy and Environmental Humanities. 

Powell’s mentorship is transnational, extending well beyond the classroom walls and engaging current and former students, activists, and junior colleagues in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, from undergraduates to assistant faculty. Mentorship is at the center of Powell’s teaching philosophy and reaches far beyond her official roles in MA and PhD committees. Grounded in collaborative, rigorous, and engaged coproduction of knowledge, Powell’s approach to mentorship uplifts students from backgrounds historically under-represented in the academy and builds new cadres of care, community engagement, and rigorous scholarship. She foregrounds community partnerships as integral to ethical and transformative teaching and mentorship relationships. 

The ENC EJ Co-Lab

With academic and community-based partners in North Carolina, Powell co-founded the Eastern NC Environmental Justice CoLab, with an emphasis on collaborative research on rural environmental justice and the socio-ecological impacts of concentrated livestock infrastructures and subsequent industrialized bioenergy. The ENC EJ CoLab became a hub for co-mentorship of students from Appalachian State University in close consultation with grassroots EJ leaders from diverse communities in Robeson County, Sampson County, and the surrounding area. This work is ongoing, led by Powell’s colleagues in North Carolina. 

The Co-Lab for Environmental Health Equity and Renewal (CEHER) and Baqlu Project

Since 2021, inspired by the ENC EJ Co-Lab, Powell has curated a new Co-Lab in Taiwan, as a space for mentoring graduate and undergraduate students in community-aligned research in environmental health and equity in contexts of energy extraction and climate disaster response. The “Baqlu Project” emerged in 2022 as one node of this Lab, and is led by graduate and post-graduate students from Bunun communities in Hualien County, the grounding site for this work. The CEHER has offered competitive international internships to students (with funding from Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council) from Germany and the USA, who work together with Indigenous Taiwanese students (funded by Powell’s NSTC grants) and other international students at Taipei Medical University (funded by TMU). This transnational lab-without-walls elevates environmental action research and processual approaches to peer mentorship and knowledge co-production. A new web of international relationships, as well as several publications and a community-aligned mixed media exhibition are underway, as preliminary results of this ongoing work.