From undergraduate to faculty member: A Q&A with Industry Assistant Professor Sebastián Romero Cruz

Tell us about how you decided to come to NYU Tandon.

Originally, I didn’t want to pursue a career in STEM; instead, I was rather set on composing musical scores for film. I was inspired by people like Alexandre Desplat and Michael Giacchino, who wrote the scores for several Pixar films. I had done music in various capacities in high school, so that felt like a natural next step.

My parents didn’t necessarily oppose that plan, but they had some concerns regarding how sustainable a career in music might be. I could understand their point of view; I knew I needed to think about earning a living, and the music world held no guarantees.

As it happened, I ended up really liking chemistry and calculus in high school, so I applied to Tandon, intending to study chemical and biomolecular engineering (CBE), and was accepted. Needless to say, my family breathed a collective sigh of relief. I still do music on the side, though.

What difficulties did you face?

CBE is an academically demanding major, so like many students, I struggled quite a bit. It turned out that I had a required course that used MATLAB, a programming language commonly used in engineering applications, and while some of my classmates found it the worst part of the semester, I ended up really liking it. This was a sort of prelude for what was to come, but I was still a few years away from realizing it.

Still, some of the latent regrets of not having studied music remained, so in my junior year I ended up taking about an 18-month sabbatical to play bass in a band, and, while it didn’t take off into the heights we were envisioning, it was a great experience. I don’t regret it at all.

Coming back to school full time, I ultimately earned my bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering in 2016. After working for a bit — and thinking about doing something more on the creative side of STEM — I decided to switch gears to computer science. That was quite a transition, to put it mildly; I had absolutely zero knowledge of software engineering when I started out, except for MATLAB and some Python.

What were some of the best parts?

This was a time when companies like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon were at a height, so studying computer science felt like being at the center of the excitement. Tandon offered quite a few classes related to subjects I was interested in, so I was able to merge STEM with creativity in a way that was very satisfying. It was through these that I discovered I loved game and music programming, as well as web development.

When did you decide to teach?

As a grad student, I tutored undergraduates in the Introduction to Problem Solving and Programming in Python, and Data Structures and Algorithms courses, and I helped with their technical writing. I also worked with groups of international students to help improve their English. This might sound like a cliché, but it began to feel like a calling.

I was hired as an adjunct professor just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which would be a trial by fire for almost everyone, and yet I still loved it. I ended up teaching Introduction to Problem Solving and Programming and Introduction to Game Programming — some of the same courses I had taken at Tandon as a student. I also taught part of the time at Pace.

This year, I was hired full-time at Tandon and got a new title, Industry Assistant Professor, and I’ll be taking the reins, as it were, of an intro course for non-majors, just as I once was. I’ll also be completely overhauling my game programming class, so I’m excited about that.

Do you have an overarching teaching philosophy?

My philosophy is based on extreme empathy. I think tough love is fine for an athletics coach but not for a teacher.

College can be hard, and computer science can be even harder. If you do poorly in a class, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t good at the subject; maybe you were simply taking it at the wrong time for you. That certainly happened to me sometimes.

STEM can be for everyone though, so you shouldn’t let yourself get discouraged. It takes a lot of self-discipline to keep going when you hit a roadblock, and everybody’s path looks extremely different, but you can do it.

What’s your best advice for current students?

This goes back to college being hard at times. You need to have a way to relax and recharge, so I recommend finding hobbies. Music is still a major outlet for me, and I love learning languages. Currently, I’m working on Japanese, Czech, and Latin. Maybe that’s a little funny when you think about the fact that I’m teaching languages of an entirely different kind — computer languages — in the classroom, but maybe that’s why I enjoy them so much.

Find something to do that has nothing to do with what you’re studying, and respect your mental health. Absolutely nothing is more important than that.