At The School of Business, students don’t just study business strategy and data science, they learn how to apply those skills in the real world. For Andrew Harp, whose career has always existed at the intersection of strategy, data, and execution, graduating with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Master in Applied Data Science for Business (MSADSB) wasn’t just a choice, it was the natural next step.
“I’ve spent most of my career in roles where strategy, data, and execution all had to line up,” Andrew says. “In the past few years, I’ve led high-impact projects at PSU, including work with FIR Northwest (now Student Work) and my capstone, and I saw the need to strengthen both sides of my skill set. The MBA gave me the structure to think about market impact, business models, and leadership. The MSADSB gave me the technical foundation to build tools and automation that solve real-world problems.”
That combination is exactly what he’s using in his latest project: an algorithmic stock trading platform. It uses a rule-based approach, blending financial fundamentals with technical indicators, to automate investment decisions and manage risk.
“It’s the perfect mix of everything I’ve studied,” Andrew explains. “From building logic and running backtests on the data side to applying capital management and business strategy, it all comes together here.”
That integrated way of thinking reflects his experience at FIR Northwest, a student-led consulting firm in The School of Business. There, managing complex client projects meant breaking big challenges into smaller, solvable parts. “We had to coordinate timelines and deliverables while building data systems that would actually last. That mindset still shapes how I work.”
Andrew’s passion for data stems from its power to turn assumptions into systems. “Data gives you leverage,” he says. “It helps you build, test, and iterate with confidence. During our capstone and other team projects, I saw how the right data can cut through the noise and lead to better, faster decisions.”
Building with data in the real world, though, comes with limitations, especially when using free or low-cost tools. “The challenge is building something clean and fast without overengineering,” Andrew says. “But that’s also the opportunity. If you can make something work with $500 and public APIs, you can scale it later.”
His current work includes Alpaca for trading and data, Alpha Vantage for financial fundamentals, and Deepnote for analysis and collaboration, tools that are both powerful and accessible for students and early-stage builders. “The platform uses real market data and logic-based signals to decide when to buy and sell,” he says. “But more importantly, it’s designed to be understandable and teachable.”
Looking ahead, Andrew hopes to incorporate more advanced tools, like Polygon, to take the platform from backtesting into real-time, live trading. “Polygon would be a big step forward,” he says. “It offers rich, real-time data streams, exactly what you need to test and run systems in live market conditions. It’s the kind of resource that can really accelerate development and take projects like this to the next level.”
Andrew sees real value in sharing what he’s building. He believes projects like his prove that students and small teams can develop tools that actually work, not just as academic exercises, but as practical solutions. “It connects what we learn in class to what we can actually build, and that’s what PSU does so well,” he says. “The work here is hands-on, practical, and immediately applicable.”
Looking ahead, Andrew hopes to use his platform in PSU finance courses, small business training programs, and workshops that introduce data science to new audiences across Portland. Long term, he wants to apply this approach in fields like consulting, finance, or product development, and eventually, return to the classroom in a new role. “I want to become a professor,” he says. “I want to teach others how to build systems that are transparent, repeatable, and useful — and show that ideas that start in the classroom can become real-world tools.”