CRISSA NELSON | editor-in-chief

Shino Simons continues to create community, as she takes on a new role.

Shino Simons is always busy. She’s always busy, but somehow, she’s never too busy. As we entered into her office, strategically located right in the middle of East Campus, she sunk down in her desk chair and let out a sigh. Not a sigh of being overwhelmed, but just a sigh from pausing a moment.

Yet despite her busy days, it’s rare to catch Simons doing anything without a smile. Whether she’s on Walkabout, grabbing a cup of coffee with a student, or even just hanging with her interns. Simons is not only always having fun, she’s never alone.

But that’s what Simons is all about. Community, on this university campus. So as the Director of Communiversity, Simons not only participates in community events, she is the force behind them.

But last fall, Simons added a slash to her business card, followed by the new title, Associate Dean of Students, and with that slash came many added responsibilities.

“It’s definitely a little more, but I love what I do,” Simons said. “The areas I get to oversee really fit where my heart is.”

After filling the place of former Associate Dean of Students, Nancy Quinones, Simons and Bill Filala now share the position. Simons now adds advising ASB and working with many student committees including the student leadership committee and women’s development committee, to the list of communities she helps to create for students on campus.

“I think it has been a good fit,” Simons said of her newest role.

But creating and participating in community on campus is nothing new for Simons. As a transfer from the University of Hawaii as a junior, Simons immediately jumped into the APU community to make up for lost time.

“I did anything and everything I could get my hands on,” Simons said.

From the Cougar women’s soccer team to MAS ministries, Simons became part of every APU community she could.

During thanksgiving and spring break she traveled to Mexico with the APU teams. Then, her senior year, she devoted herself to the freshman girls of Adams Hall first floor east, as an RA, helping to give them the APU freshman experience she never had.

Simons graduated from APU with a degree in Psychology, but not without first being involved in five different departments.

“I went from liberal studies to linguistics to social work to psychology to youth ministries and back to social work and then declared my major officially [as psychology] senior year,” Simons said. “I don’t know how I did it but I did and it worked out.”

She laughs as she leans back remembering, shaking her head at her crazy days as a student.

While little has changed from her days of a scribbled full student planner, her love for this campus and being involved in the community of people here, hasn’t changed either.

After graduating from APU Simons returned to Hawaii to serve as a youth pastor for a year before feeling a pull back to APU.

“During that time I really felt that God was saying, ‘Go and work with college students, that’s where your heart is, that’s where your passion lies,’” Simons remembers. “There were so many people in my life who impacted me while I was a college student. And seeing how much they helped me to grow I realized, ‘wow that’s so cool how God used them.’”

She recalls the conversations she would have with college students as a youth pastor about what their own calling was.

Yet while she was helping others find theirs, Simons began to discover her own.

It wasn’t until going home that Simons realized she left her heart at APU.

So after one short year away, she came back to Southern California and became an RD in Bowles for four years while finishing her masters at APU in college student affairs. She became the Assistant Director of Residence Life and then the Director for a year before coming to Communiversity.

Throughout each of these roles, it’s always been about student development, about equipping students for life after APU. Simons desire is to make sure students are ready to engage with the world.

“That’s the reason I don’t get tired of this job,” she said. “The passion God gave me gets pumped up and is utilized through this position, through the opportunities I get to have on campus.”

Simons also recognizes the support she has from those in her own APU community. She pauses as she reflects on her last semester of added responsibilities, then points out her office window to her Assistant Director of Communiversity, Jordana Dickey. Simons says working alongside Dickey is a privilege and has allowed her to share some of her responsibilities at Communiversity, allowing her to undertake this new position. She humbly acknowledges her need for others in her life to pour into her as she pours into this community.

“I wish I could say I’m always pouring out an overflow of what God is doing,” Simons said. “But some days I feel like I’m poking a hole in my cup. How can you pour out if you’re empty?”

She recognizes the importance of relationships that are not only supportive but also challenging.

“I have my own accountability in my life, praying for me, [asking] me difficult questions,” Simons said. “Friends, mentors, of course my husband, and my dad. They know me and have seen me grow up in this role.”

But while Simons couldn’t stop talking about the wonderful support she has, Dickey describes Simons as a woman of God who loves people passionately and wholly and is a mentor to so many here on campus including herself.

“One of the things I love about Shino is that she really believes in students. She believed in me as a student and helped me grow,” Dickey said. “It’s great to walk alongside her and be mentored by her, but also see the impact she makes on others.”

Whether just hanging out with students at events or having one-on-one chats over coffee, Dickey describes Simons as intentional in all she does.

“She really asks them; where are you at? What are the needs you see on campus? She values student feedback and generates it in the programs she designs and how she lives out her daily life,” Dickey said. “When she took on the [new] role,from day one she was seeking God’s wisdom and guidance. It was awesome to watch, to see that her decisions were not her own, but that they were really what God was calling her to do.”

Simons also agrees that intentionality is essential to her job. Communiversity is always doing something fun, but for both Simons and Dickey the focus is on how to challenge students and have purpose behind what they do.

“We don’t just call ourselves Communiversity because it’s a fun word, its about building community on our university campus,” Simons said.

And now it’s about extending that to her new role. As Shino’s sphere of influence broadens, Dickey is only one of many excited to see that her impact on the campus is growing.

“It’s so great that more people can get to know who she is because she is such a unique and special lady,” Dickey said.

ASB president Philip Brazell now works closely with Simons in her new role and acknowledges her intentional commitment to each of her responsibilities.

“She has taken on so much more responsibility, but I still feel that I am a priority, ASB is still a priority,” Brazell said. “I don’t know someone on campus more in touch with the heart beat of students, but then also so involved with the mission and ethos of the staff and administration. She has such widespread knowledge of the campus but still, the students are her life.”

As Simons influence and involvement on the APU community continues to grow, her heart grows right along with it.

“It’s addicting. I can see God’s work in students lives…and its so phenomenal and amazing and so when God allows me to see that its like, why wouldn’t I want to see that again in someone else’s life,” Simons said. “I get to walk with students all the time and just be a part of that process.”

As she embarks on her newest conquest, the Phd program in Higher Education at Claremont Graduate University, she hopes her continued education will enhance her service on campus. The more experience she has, the more she believes she can give back to students so they can learn from her mistakes too.

“I have had a lot of privileges, a lot of opportunities over the years,” Simons said. “[It has been a great accomplishment] when I decided to be obedient to God and he used those moments to do his work.”

She has impacted many throughout this campus, and her passion to see life lived to the fullest God has for the APU campus does not go unrecognized.

“As we’re all doing life together, it’s awesome to see people model that,” Dickey said. “She’s a great model and testament to me.”