A lesson in living: Senior Julie Malone receives college’s highest honor

Senior Julie Malone is all smiles on May 19 after receiving St. Mary’s College’s Lumen Christi Award, the highest honor that the college can give a student. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

Julie Malone walked toward the stage, stunned by the announcement and the sight of all her classmates and professors rising to give her a standing ovation.

As the cheers and the applause surrounded her, Malone remembered when she was a first-grade student who had just been diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disorder.

Now here she was on graduation day at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., walking up the steps of the stage to receive the Lumen Christi Award—the highest honor that her college can give a student.

As she walked across the stage to receive the medal, the 22-year-old Malone was struck with the thought that the award was another part of her journey in life, an award she believed was far from just her own.

She thought of all the people who have helped her, not only at Saint Mary’s but also in her earlier years in her hometown of Indianapolis—at St. Thomas Aquinas School, Cathedral High School and St. Mary’s Child Center, the archdiocesan agency where she was diagnosed with dyslexia and taught how to live with it.

“The journey I’ve come through is the experience I’ll take away,” she says. “I’ll take away the inner strength that it took to get through that, but I also know it wasn’t a journey I went through alone. I met a lot of teachers and people along the way who helped me and made me see my potential to give back.”

The Lumen Christi Award was a surprise to Malone when it was announced at the May 19 graduation, but the list of reasons she earned the honor was hardly a secret.

She served as a peer minister with the college’s campus ministry department. She played two years of basketball at the all-women’s college. She was president of her residence hall. During her senior year, she was selected as the student trustee on the college’s board of trustees. She also volunteered each summer at an Indianapolis camp for children with learning difficulties.

“It’s called Camp Delafield,” she says. “I attended the camp the summer after I was diagnosed with dyslexia. It’s a six-week day camp. It really had a profound effect on me. Often, students are very

self-conscious about their learning disability. After finding I had dyslexia, I was in the camp and met hundreds of kids who had it. I saw they had similar interests. It broke down any barriers thinking I was the only one who had dyslexia, that it was me against the world.”

As a volunteer at the camp, she tried to be an example to the children.

“I love to work with the kids and talk with them,” she says. “They found out I had gone to the camp and that I have dyslexia. They ask me about going to high school and college. I think it means a lot to them to know I go through those same daily challenges as they do.”

Her parents—Dr. James and Jeanne Malone of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish—are proud that their daughter is doing for children what others have done for her.

“Every child is affected by every adult they come into contact with,” says Jeanne Malone. “People kept encouraging her along the way, and she kept reaching for the next rung. It’s such a reflection of all the people in her life who have spent time understanding what a learning difference is, and that there’s a gift in it.”

Julie Malone graduated from Saint Mary’s with a degree in biology. She plans to pursue a doctorate in biology, with the hope of becoming a college professor.

She believes her life so far has already taught her one lesson she wants to share.

“I really believe you learn something from everyone you meet and you can see Christ in every person you meet,” she says. “I’ve not only learned about my faith and trusting in God, I’ve also learned about other people’s faith. It’s just been inspiring to my life.” †