LEARNING & LIVING: Denison named 2023 Lilly Scholar, plans to study mechanical engineering

Joey Denison is right at home in the theater department at Brown County High School, where he’s learned all the inner workings of school productions, all the way from set building to running the whole backstage crew on show days.

Denison, a senior, became the technical director for the theater department at the beginning of his junior year, a milestone he said was only obtainable because of his drive to see just how far he can go.

He harnessed this drive when he applied for the Lilly Endowment Scholarship, which would grant him the chance to attend his college of choice.

Ultimately, his efforts paid off — Denison was named Brown County’s Lilly Scholar in December.

The Lilly Endowment scholarship is a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to any college or university in Indiana. It also includes a $900 yearly stipend for books. The scholarship is administered by the community foundation and is awarded to one high school senior each year.

He came to find the essay he had to write for the scholarship challenged him to represent himself through his writing, something he had not done before.

In school he had always been tasked with writing argumentatively, usually about topics or viewpoints that did not necessarily interest him, he said.

How to fully encapsulate himself in a small amount of pages for a scholarship was a different sort of task.

“I thought it was going to be about who was the best essay writer, but really it was about who is the best at representing themselves,” he said.

“It was making those 10 pages into the summation of me and my experiences, like — how do you do that?”

The other difficult part of the application process was the waiting, Denison said. It took over a month — after applications, interviews and an impromptu essay — for submissions to be fully processed and finalized.

In that period of time, Denison said there was a lot of waiting and questioning whether he had done everything to the best of his ability.

“It’s really just an opportunity to show how big you can be, how far you can go and what you can do,” he said.

Whether or not he received the scholarship, he said, was the difference between him going to his dream school, Rose-Hulman, or not.

The decision for college was between Rose-Hulman and Purdue, which both offer degrees in engineering and technology, which are Denison’s passions.

Rose-Hulman stood out to him because of its smaller size. Having attended a small high school, he said, Rose-Hulman “just made sense.”

Denison plans to study mechanical engineering, and knows that it will allow for career options after graduation, which he has not yet determined.

“I want something that’s going to heighten me in my career, and also just heighten my problem solving skills, my ability to think about things from a mechanical perspective, and it just made sense,” he said.

He looks fondly upon his time at BCHS, describing it as “the most transformative time in (his) life.”

He went through many changes, the biggest being the shift in what motivates him each day.

First he was motivated by grades, he said, but now he is motivated by learning.

“Previously I had been motivated extrinsically through grades. … I’ve become intrinsically motivated, in that I want to learn things for the sake of learning, I want to build things and push for the sake of pushing,” he said.

“That little change in word and that little change in how you think about things, is just crazy. You go from the limit being an A+, to the limit being, who knows?”

In the classroom, Denison’s favorite subjects are chemistry and physics. He said he is interested in learning how the world works at a fundamental level and being able to apply that to everyday life.

“It’s not just learning for the sake of learning, it’s learning and then being able to use it,” he said last week.

Denison, who’s been involved in about six productions at the high school, cares for theater as an art form, but he said last week that his interests in the department extend beyond putting on a show.

“I really like building things, I like working with my hands,” he said.

“I like learning about new tools, getting to use the latest and coolest things, so this is more of a vessel, if you will, for that.”

He applies these interests towards other hobbies outside of school as well. In his downtime, he enjoys working on his car and studying up online about all the latest tools and technology.

“Until I actually had the ability to work hands-on with things, really dealing with things that are way above me, it was taking it from getting an ‘A’ to realizing my passions, and realizing that I don’t just need to be motivated extrinsically, through grades, I can actually do stuff because I want to,” he said.

“I’m doing the stuff that really pushes me.”

Denison applies this mindset to a variety of other activities. He plays upright and electric bass in the BCHS Jazz Band, rollerblades around town for exercise, and he even participated in competitive sabre fencing for five years.

To relax and de-stress, Denison said he enjoys being in nature. He said his family has a tradition going to Paynetown near Lake Monroe to do some hunting and be in the woods for a weekend.

“In a world where everything is moving very fast, it is very, very nice to just sit and be cold and think about things,” he said.

Learning from life

Denison gives credit to his parents and upbringing, specifically what he has learned from observing his father as he has carried himself through his career and life’s challenges.

Denison’s mother, Lesley, said when she found out he was named the 2023 Lilly Scholar, it was the best feeling in the world.

“It takes a lot of load off,” she said.

Dan, Denison’s father, had a hemorrhagic stroke two years ago, and Lesley quit her job to take care of him. Dan has worked at Cummins for around 20 years, Denison said.

Now, their son is able to get a college education for free.

“He is the best kid in the world, I really mean that,” Lesley said.

She said he’s compassionate, smart and very determined.

In five years time, his mother hopes that he’s graduated from school and is just happy.

“I think he could go anywhere,” she said.

After his father had the stroke, daily life and routines were a big adjustment, Denison said.

“He was always on top of things, he was always at the front of everything, he was always doing things. And then getting (the stroke), he was gone for the better part of six months, just M.I.A.” he said.

However, even in the face of a tragedy, he was able to find a lesson to learn and grow.

He had to take on extra responsibilities his dad had taken care of up until that point, Denison said. He also learned about all the little things — like finding out how to access bank accounts, pay bills, planning when and how to get groceries — and how they really added up.

Denison said being able to rely on the stability that his teachers offered him made it a lot easier to stay calm in the face of such a challenging event.

He was able to come to school and rely on teachers for help and stability in a difficult time. Those teachers, he said, all shared a passion for their work and students.

“Being thrown into that, sink or swim, having to swim and having to take on that extra responsibility, you know, I wouldn’t have preferred it, but it was a good learning experience, just showing myself that I am capable,” he said.

Worth the time

Denison discovered in recent years his love for being active in the community.

When he was in seventh grade, he joined the National Junior Honors Society. To fulfill a community service requirement he began volunteering at the public library, where he said he was tasked with dusting shelves.

Not long after starting at the library, Denison then decided to volunteer his time at Mother’s Cupboard Food Pantry.

When he started there, he learned under the former executive director, Chef Sherry Houze, who passed away in July last year.

“She was an amazing resource and an amazing person to learn from,” he said.

“And what was once a way to fulfill a service requirement turned into something I enjoyed doing and enjoyed learning from.”

From cooking to serving 150 guests at the food pantry, Denison described serving at Mother’s Cupboard as a good way spend time with friends and in the community.

He tries to volunteer once or twice a month.

“I just love it … it’s always been really fun,” he said.

He said volunteering at the pantry brings diverse groups of people together to serve and build a community.

“It brings people together, in a weird way,” he said.

“You think of court-ordered community service, and you think of 70-year-old retirees and you don’t really think they could go together, but they do, in the weirdest way. There’s food to be made, there’s people to be served, and its a sense of community, it’s not what you think it is. It’s weird, but a really good weird.”

Denison has enjoyed volunteering at Mother’s Cupboard so much that he joined its board of directors as a junior member more than a year ago, at the recommendation of Chef Sherry.

“As I started to show up to meetings, started to talk with them,” he said, “(other board members) said, ‘Well, you’re doing everything that a regular member is doing, so why did we have to add the ‘junior’ on there?’”

He believes he adds a young perspective to the board, but what he gets most from the experience is that opportunity to observe how members discuss and make decisions.

“They think about things in a way that I would never really think about, and especially from a directing a business essentially point, it’s really good experience, just being around them.”

Denison said joining a board full of professionals with much more life experience than him at such a young age was daunting at first. Even though he had seen and worked with all the board members during his time volunteering, he said he did feel like the odd one out once he sat at the table and began to talk business with them.

“But, it was welcoming as it could have been,” he said.

“They love me, they’re amazing people. They were nothing but inviting.”

Mother’s Cupboard board president Sandy Richardson said that the board could not have been more pleased than to hear Denison named the recipient of the Lilly Endowment Scholarship.

“Joey and his family have volunteered for a long time at Mother’s Cupboard, it always struck us how he had such a passion for that,” she said.

“What teenager wants to do that? Not a lot.”

After Denison joined the board, Richardson said she was more impressed with him as she got to know him.

“I was so impressed with his decision making, input, things on the board and how special he is. I’m probably the biggest Joey fan ever. He’s meant so much to us. We’re so happy for him. We’re overjoyed.

She said his parents have “so much to be proud of with that young man.”

Denison said his experiences in the Mother’s Cupboard kitchen and around the table at board meetings translate over to almost all other parts of his life, impacting how he approaches situations.

He said he has also been able to develop ways to present his thoughts and feelings in a productive way.

“Really, it’s just how to talk to people, how to work with people, who are way different than you are,” he said.

“Because you’re almost in an echo chamber in classes with all the same people you’ve had since kindergarten. You know exactly how they’re going to act, how they deal with things, so having that difference, it’s scary at first, but it’s really, really, really valuable. And I see it everyday.”