Christina Denny was crowned Miss Maryland earlier this year.

Christina Denny wasn’t in it for the glamour, the makeup or the designer gowns.

When the university alumna was looking online for scholarship opportunities during her undergraduate years, she happened to stumble upon the Miss America Organization. The pageant appealed to the former gymnast’s love of competition, so she entered.

Several local titles later, Denny, a special needs teacher, was crowned Miss Maryland 2013 earlier this year and will vie for the title of Miss America.

When Jenni Coopersmith, a teacher at Echelon Academy in Sandy Spring, heard she would be sharing a classroom with an aspiring Miss America, she didn’t hear much else. Coming from a family of anti-beauty contest feminists, Coopersmith wasn’t too thrilled by the news.

But less than a year after meeting her coworker, Coopersmith found herself driving a rented van full of students more than an hour to see Denny compete in the Miss Western Maryland pageant.

“Sure, a lot of the pageant was cliche and funny,” Coopersmith said. “But Christina wasn’t. She was sincere and honest, and she brought the entire competition up to a level of intelligence and class. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true.”

The Miss Maryland pageant, affiliated with the Miss America Organization, uses scoring based on each respondent’s on-stage interview responses, performance in evening wear, and lifestyle and fitness in a swimsuit. All contestants must raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network, and each has her own charity.

Denny’s charity of choice, “Special Deeds for Special Needs,” stems from her passion for teaching at Echelon, doing volunteer work and working one-on-one with individual students as an applied behavioral analysis therapist.

“A lot of times, with special needs kids, it’s sort of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Not everyone thinks about these issues every day, but I think it’s important to make it known that these people deserve equality — in sports, education, arts, in everything,” Denny said. “I try to tell everyone that they’re people too. We should be working towards giving everyone equal opportunity.”

Denny began participating in local pageants while studying hearing and speech sciences at this university. As she became more involved, she said, she appreciated the Miss America program even more.

“It offered me an amazing chance to perform onstage, gain interview skills and gain confidence,” Denny said. “I was never a musical performer onstage until I started competing in pageants, and now I have a vocal coach and sing in competitions.”

Denny’s mother, Sheryl Denny, said she has seen her daughter grow substantially since she first began competing in pageants — particularly in her interview skills.

“She’s learned how to really speak clearly and answer questions concisely. She’s incredibly well-spoken now,” Sheryl Denny said. “She’s fearless — she always was, but now it’s even more evident, up there in front of the judges.”

Though Christina Denny will dedicate the next year to Miss Maryland commitments and preparing for the Miss America competition, students and teachers said they won’t forget her teaching style.

Denny gave more than expected in her work with students, Coopersmith said.

Her effective methods incorporated music into her lesson plans whenever possible, and she often sang with students and even participated in their winter concert.

When this university’s popular “Gangnam Style” parody came out, Denny showed it to her students on the classroom’s interactive whiteboard.

“You’ve got a bunch of new Terps fans, thanks to her,” Coopersmith said, laughing.

Denny, who graduated in spring 2012, said that after the pageant fun is over, she wants to return to school for a master’s in speech pathology.

As Coopersmith said, “She’s no dumb beauty queen.”