General studies junior Shanice Jordyn poses for a picture at the Memorial Union on the Tempe campus. Shanice Jordyn was selected as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for April 2014 after representing ASU in the Girls of the Pac-12 issue published in October 2013. (Photo by Ryan Liu)ASU has seen its fair share of alumni go on to the national spotlight, from Jimmy Kimmel to Barry Bonds, but the next ASU student to hit it big won’t be entering a draft any time soon.
Shanice Jordyn is a general studies junior and Playboy’s April Playmate of the Month. Jordyn is taking classes online to satisfy her general studies requirements, so she can go to school to be a dental hygienist.
After moving to the Valley from South Dakota when she was 17, ASU became her new hometown school. She is a graduate of Mountain Pointe High School in Ahwatukee and was working at Hooters on Mill Avenue when she got her first chance to do professional modeling with Playboy.
“I used to do little photo shoots with photographers who wanted a portfolio, but I never did anything like this," she said.
Scouts for Playboy approached Jordyn while she was working in March 2013, looking for someone to represent ASU in the Girls of the PAC-12 issue published in October 2013.
Playboy’s Vice President of Public Relations Theresa Hennessey said this was the point at which Playboy decided to keep Jordyn.
“After her photos ran in that pictorial, our photo editors thought she’d make the perfect Playmate,“ she said in an email. “Not only is she beautiful, but she’s smart, funny and engaging — all qualities we look for when choosing someone to be a Playboy Playmate of the Month and represent the magazine.”
Miss April 2014 Shanice Jordyn poses for a photograph at the ASU Memorial Union. Shanice Jordyn does general studies online at ASU and was selected for Playboy's Playmate of the Month after being published in the Girls of the Pac-12 issue in October 2013. (Photo by Andrew Ybanez)The way Jordyn was discovered was just one of many ways Playboy finds its Playmates.
“There are a variety of ways our photo editors find Playmates, and every case is different," Hennessey said. "Some women submit their photos directly to our photos editors, some are discovered by our staff photographers, some women attend a casting call, sometimes a modeling agency will recommend someone to our editors and sometimes a woman appears in a different pictorial in the magazine."
Jordyn appears to be enjoying the change of lifestyle, too.
“I love it," Jordyn said. "It's so fun. The mansion is fun, and I really love going to promotions and parties to promote the magazine."
As far as her future, Jordyn is relatively settled on it all.
“I’ll go back to school to be a dental hygienist, but for the next two years, I just want to do Playboy, but I’d also love to do work with Nike, too,” she said.
Karla Mikkelson, her mother, said she approves of the career path that her daughter is on.
“She’s got a good head on her. She’ll make the right choices," Mikkelson said. "If modeling is what she wants to do, then this is great, because honestly, you’ve got to do it while you can."
Contact the reporter at dhignutt@asu.edu or follow him on twitter @davidhignutt
