Sandellyo Kauba was flying high in his career a decade ago, achieving the level of senior scientist at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, where he researched drugs to treat cancer and HIV.

But at home, things weren't going so smoothly. Kauba's elder son, Elijah, appeared to have no direction in life, spending most of his free time playing video games and paying little attention to his schoolwork.

Putting family before career, Kauba decided to leave the drug industry to return to school, paving a new career path for himself and his son. Kauba is now an assistant professor of Cybersecurity at Wake Tech, while his son is an instructor in the department.

"My family didn't really support me when I was in college," Kauba said. "I was determined to help my children find their way, find their own truth and be successful. It's beautiful to see how they developed."

While Kauba continued to work at Glaxo, he and his son took IT classes at Wake Tech in the evening. He chose IT because, even as a researcher, he was fascinated by technology and how smartphones and other gadgets worked.

"It was like magic, in my mind," he said.

He saw a booming future in networking and information security, so he picked both fields as programs he and his son could study.

"I've always liked messing with computers," Elijah Kauba said, noting he had no problem following his father's lead.

Going to school with his father "was second nature," he said, noting their relationship has "always been very peer-like."

"It was helpful to me in different ways," he said. "It was easier to make mistakes and learn from them with him there. And we could practice learning and teaching the material together."

They earned their Cybersecurity degrees in 2016 and Network Management degrees two years later and went to work in the IT industry.

While at Cisco Systems Inc., Sandellyo Kauba worked to create an internship pipeline between Wake Tech and the networking company. His success in mentoring students led to an adjunct teaching position at Wake Tech.

Teaching quickly became "an addiction," he says. "It aligned with my natural passion (for technology), and I developed an obsession with helping others."

Over time, he earned about 50 IT certifications to broaden his knowledge and give him the foundation to help as many students as possible.

"He's super-easy to work with," Cybersecurity student Amarachi Ekwegh said. "He works hard to make sure students have all the resources they need to be successful."

Ekwegh says Kauba was her mentor during a Work-Based Learning experience, and he also is helping her establish a Women in Cybersecurity chapter at Wake Tech.

In the classroom, Kauba routinely provides tips to students on how to handle specific questions in job interviews and shares stories of what to do and not do while building skills. For example, he says he and Elijah frequently irritated family members because they would tear apart the home router to study its inner workings, preventing others from watching Netflix until the pair could put the device back together. His recommendation: Have spares of various devices to use for practice.

"You can see his passion in what he does," Ekwegh said.

Kauba, who won a 2023-24 Excellence in Teaching award, says the passion he's found in teaching sometimes results in him overcommitting himself. He enlisted Elijah to help him teach his SEC-160: Security Administration I course in the Fall 2024 semester so he could spend more time getting the SENTINEL Cybersecurity Bootcamp up and running. He's the co-principal investigator on the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded project.

SEC-160 is Elijah Kauba's first course as a full-time faculty member. He says he never envisioned himself as a teacher because he disliked school so much as a student. But while working in the IT industry, he repeatedly found himself in a teaching role as a team leader or a consultant. When Wake Tech offered him an adjunct position several years ago, "I realized teaching was my calling."

As with their time going to school together, both men say they enjoy working together to help students learn and prepare for careers in IT.

"My focus will always be on helping others," Sandellyo Kauba said. "I see other people my age looking to change careers. I went from a senior scientist to entry-level IT, and I know I can help them transition and move ahead."