For Jordan Eres, nothing says community like Long Beach State.

“This campus is home,” said Eres, the special projects coordinator for Associated Students. “And ASI, even more so for me. From my former roles in student government to my work here as a student assistant to my current full-time position now, as well as the people I work with and the great things we do -- it’s all so familiar to me.”

An alum of Long Beach State, Jordan has worked on campus for the better part of his student and post-graduate life. Starting in maintenance with fellow Essential Piece winner John Jost, he’s also worked in communications in the chancellor’s office as well as in ASI Communications as a graduate assistant.

And even though Eres lives and breathes LBSU and ASI, he says it took him a while to actually get involved with ASI while he was a student.

“When I got more involved with ASI as a junior, it helped me put the pieces together that we had all these resources available,” Eres reflected. “It took time as a student to figure those things out, it definitely took time.”

In his current role as special projects coordinator, Eres works on long-term projects that affect ASI and/or the USU at the corporate level. Projects that he works on, like a long-term assessment project and full-time staff development ventures, are meant to be put into place to directly benefit a plethora of departments across the organization.

“We get to put so many programs in place and watch them blossom, benefitting both our staff and the students,” said Eres. “And I think that part of it, really, is that we try to develop a culture of learning on this campus.”

Eres continued: “We embrace our student assistants, we want to develop them, and we also take that same approach with our full-time staff. We should be constantly learning about our fields and learning about how to be better people. It’s that development aspect that we really try to push to make sure that everyone gets the chance to be a little bit better.”

When he found out about his Essential Piece of the Puzzle nomination, he was humbled. “I was so honored, because everyone here is an essential piece of the puzzle, really,” said Eres. “The organization couldn’t function without every single person here. And the fact that my colleagues nominated me -- I was just so honored.”

Eres’ advice for his students -- and really any student that’s involved with ASI -- is to not be afraid of asking questions.

“Everyone at ASI has very unique stories about how we got to where we are now,” said Eres. “Make sure you ask all the questions you need to ask, and utilize every resource for information as you can”

“Moving this organization forward does awesome things for this community,” said Eres. “It took some time for me to see it, but I’m glad it did because it changed everything.”

Jordan Eres was awarded the Essential Piece of the Puzzle during the March ASI employee assembly. As a part of ASI’s commitment to uplifting customer service, each month all full-time staff participates and votes in this monthly employee of the month program.