Technology Project Management master’s student Turkan Devrijova is wasting no time in finding new ways to give back to the University of Houston. She expects to graduate this December, but she’s already contributing to the annual UH Energy Industry Crawfish Boil with her unique project management and AI-literate skill set via her Cullen College of Engineering senior capstone project.
The UH Energy Industry Crawfish Boil is a family-friendly festival bringing alumni, faculty, students and industry professionals together for networking, food and fun. Proceeds support the multidisciplinary capstone fund designed to increase professional readiness for Cullen College engineering and technology students. In addition to showcasing several Cullen students’ capstone projects at this year’s event, Devrijova’s own project management skills will support the event itself.
“My professor told me that there was a project available that would give back to UH and alumni, and of course I was interested in contributing to the university and giving back with some of the skills I’ve learned here,” said Devrijova.
“We wanted to plan the scope of the project around the whole event process — not just the crawfish boil, though this is a great event for us to work with — so the main scope is creating a PMO, or project management office, for the office of advancement. This will centralize the process of executing both the upcoming crawfish boil and other future events.”
“The idea of incorporating a capstone project into our event logistics, operations, and post-event evaluation is almost too obvious — in the best possible way,” said Cullen College of Engineering Director of Alumni Relations Cathy Brown. “The Crawfish Boil is a large-scale, real-world event with multiple stakeholders, tight timelines, and moving parts, which makes it an ideal environment for systems thinking, process improvement, and applied problem-solving. Her work will directly support volunteers, students, sponsors, vendors, and guests — so this is not a hypothetical exercise, but one with real impact.”
In addition to the creation of the project management office, Devrijova is digitizing the entire process into a streamlined Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard platform. Once it succeeds this spring, it will serve as a permanent, automated digital framework within the university system with the goal of supporting success for all future departmental projects.
“One thing I love about this project is that I’m using almost all of the skills I’ve learned throughout this program, like risk management, quality management and analysis, PMO creation and event project management… I’m really managing the whole project from the role of a project manager, and the outcome will benefit others, so that means a lot to me,” she said. “The goal of this event is to attract sponsors and allow students to connect with them. It works from both sides, and everyone should and will benefit.”
Devrijova describes the “best-case scenario” as “an independently-working, functioning, supportive PMO that will keep working to support all of the advancement office’s projects, as well as a working, frictionless dashboard that will digitize and centralize all of the existing manual and fragmented resources into an automated, AI friendly analytics hub to improve data transparency and institutional memory.”
She also hopes that the “larger butterfly effect” will be an increased use of predictive analytics and AI-driven automation in PMOs for other institutions of higher education, for which UH can serve as a trailblazing example. Once the project is completed, she plans to publish it as a paper that can serve as a resource for other institutions to deploy similar approaches.
“I enjoy bringing innovation,” Devrijova said. “Project management today is not the same field it was 10 years ago. It was different — more engineering focused, more budget focused, more schedule focused. Now it’s more customer focused, and specifically in delivering value to users and customers to please stakeholders while also following innovations like the integration of AI and digitization.
“Any tool can be a weapon in a certain person’s hands, and they can use that tool for harm or for good. I have ensured that all digitization follows UH IT policies, prioritizing data residency and security by utilizing University-approved platforms. My approach ensures that digitization is used as a tool for efficiency while maintaining full transparency and confidentiality. This isn’t just about creativity; it’s a responsibility for me to approach with the proper respect.”
The 35th UH Energy Industry Crawfish Boil at the University of Houston will take place on April 19, 2026, at 1:00 PM. Tickets and additional event details are available at this link.