FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Trinity Simons, director of the Mayors' Institute on City Design in Washington, D.C., is the spring 2015 commencement speaker for the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Commencement for the school's class of 2015 will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in the Verizon Ballroom of the Arkansas Union on the University of Arkansas campus.

As director of the institute, Simons works with mayors from across the country, assisting them in addressing some of our nation's most pressing urban planning and design issues. She previously directed the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, a prestigious fellowship program for emerging architects to achieve design excellence in affordable housing through work with community development corporations.

Simons speaks about the intersection of design and political activity at events and symposia across the country, including national conferences of the American Institute of Architects, the American Planning Association, and the American Society of Landscape Architects. She currently serves as on the Board of Directors of the Association for Community Design and has previously served on the Boards of the National Architectural Accrediting Board, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, the American Institute of Architecture Students, and the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Her design work has won numerous awards, including a Progressive Architecture Citation, a Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Design Award, and an Outstanding Student Planning Award from the American Planning Association.

She has a Bachelor of Architecture from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and a Master of City Planning with a focus on city design and real estate development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.