Sarah graduated from the University of Texas, Austin in 2010 where her dissertation research won the 2011 Dissertation of the Year Award for the AERA Districts in Research and Reform Special Interest Group. Sarah Diem's scholarship focuses on issues of segregation, desegregation and educational equity in urban districts and surrounding areas, and her work considers factors, encompassing both policy and practice, at the building, district and state levels. She is a co-PI on two major Ford Foundation grants that examine how local conditions and policy designs may mediate implementation outcomes in school desegregation cases.