Can He Do It? Project Coordinator Mayfred Reyesser Juggles Behind-the-Scenes Duties at CGEST

By Manfred Reyesser

Imagine the following situation: CGEST just hired a new Project Coordinator, and it’s me! I had never worked at Arizona State University before, and I was definitely not familiar with departmental policies, procedures, or CGEST and ASU’s culture. My first major project was to organize an in-person summer camp at ASU for 8th-12th grade students from around the Valley and I had three months to do it.

I am a Physics Major from the University of Würzburg, Germany. I was a firefighter in my hometown of Klingenberg for 13 years, then I worked at Intel for 26 years, half of those as a Program Manager. But this project scared the daylights out of me. I felt like drinking from a full-on fire hydrant. Me? Handle all this? Oh boy. Well, time to roll up my sleeves and dive into the details. And there were details. Lots of them.

The camp had to be on campus to give students a “university feeling.” That means, I needed to reserve a room. However, first I needed to be designated to be the department’s official “room reserver.” Then, I had to create an event name and description, without which I would not have been able to reserve a room. Now I could finally get that room.

Did I mention details? There were many more.

ASU catering only serves within the Memorial Union. Classrooms are off limits for food and beverages. They also need a minimum of three business days’ notice of any food order or a change in food order. The minimum amount for any food order is $250 (before tax). Shoot, I needed to increase our Meet ‘n’ Greet food order. There were many more details within details and back up plans within back up plans. (I did mention details earlier, didn’t I?)

One week before camp I casually mentioned to the MU events team that we needed a couple of additional tables for our project, the remotely operated vehicle assembly, complete with drilling, soldering, cutting pipes, and so on. That type of activity had to be submitted to and approved by the ASU Fire Marshall. I almost freaked out – what if they said no?

In the end, the camp went off without a hitch and I could breathe again. Yes, the (Sun) Devil lies in the details, but they can be managed, dealt with, and taken care of.