Denise Cruz, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, has been in practice since 2005 in a variety of roles and settings. Prior to joining NYU in September 2022, she was the director of clinical education and clinical services and an adjunct faculty member at Marymount Manhattan College.
Tell us about your background.
Speech language pathology is a very broad field, and I’ve had experience in a variety of communication, voice, feeding, and swallowing disorders across various settings and delivery models. My first clinical passion was with adult and geriatric services working with head and neck cancer patients who had voice and swallowing issues. I worked at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai for 13 years, where I also really enjoyed having student interns.
My love of my career translates easily to a passion for teaching and recruiting students into the profession. As a bilingual speaker of English and Spanish, I’m particularly focused on reaching out to minority students to increase diversity—and therefore accessibility for patients—in the SLP field.
What are some of your pedagogical foci?
I like to target my pedagogy based on trauma-informed practices; many of my patients have traumatic backgrounds, and the field doesn’t currently have a strong emphasis on incorporating counseling. I want to make sure students are taught how to treat the disorders, but also connect that missing link to have empathetic individuals who can look at patients through multifaceted lenses.
Talk about being a “practivist” (practicing clinician and activist).
I’m dedicated to social justice activism in healthcare and education and patient advocacy. I try to inspire my students to get more involved in advocacy for our field, and sometimes they are scared to get political. I want to demonstrate that activism is more about looking at issues surrounding healthcare and education and how they affect our patients, as well as and how they affect us as professionals and how we can do our jobs.
