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Aarushi Sahejpal has found purpose in what once paralyzed him.
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The child of Indian engineers who immigrated to San Jose in 1997, he found math a frustrating jumble of numbers. “I nearly failed every math class growing up. I was told I couldn’t do it, so I believed I couldn’t do it.”
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And then, suddenly, he did it. After creating his first spreadsheet in 2018 as an intern with Education Week, something clicked. “My manager said, ‘You just built a dataset.’ I was like, ‘No way, this is fascinating.’”
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In August, Sahejpal, 23, will become one of the youngest professors in AU history, joining the School of Communication—where he’s worked as an adjunct since 2022—as a professorial lecturer in quantitative methods and data journalism. He will hold a dual appointment as data editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop—a position he’s held since last year.
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It only took a few years for Sahejpal to overcome his fear of numbers and literally write the book on it. (So, You Are Bad at Math . . . is forthcoming.) The secret to his exponential success? “A work ethic no one could deny,” he says.Ìę
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Sahejpal—one of the first Eagles to major in data science, a program that now boasts dozens of students—taught himself to code while working the overnight shift at the front desk of Anderson Hall. After the pandemic hit and his 8 a.m. classes became 5 a.m. classes on the West Coast, Sahejpal volunteered with the Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project to fill the long days. Within weeks, he was offered a full-time job building the first dataset in the country to track the spread of COVID in long-term care facilities.Ìę
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“I realized that you can change the world with numbers. You can help answer some of the most profound questions and shed light on the most marginalized communities,” Sahejpal says.Ìę
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Two years later, when he started working at SOC while pursuing his master’s in data science, Sahejpal imparted that same lesson to his students.Ìę
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“The tools they learn in my class will help them tell the stories of tomorrow. Data is powerful, but no one is built to be a numbers person. You have to want it,” he says. “I’ve spent my entire life trying to be seen. I found myself at AU, I fell in love with numbers here. I can’t think of a greater honor than helping my students do the same.”Ìę
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