Oak Harbor senior wins Cascadia Eye scholarship for service and academics

Aysah Bosch, an Oak Harbor High School senior with a college path in vision care in sight, won a $1,500 scholarship from Cascadia Eye for academic performance and community involvement.

The award came through Cascadia Eye’s Excellence in Education program, which the company says has been running since 2003 and is now in its 24th year. The scholarship is designed for high school seniors in the company’s service areas who have a GPA of 3.25 or better and plan to enroll full time at a trade school, college or university. Cascadia Eye says students in any field of study can apply.

For Oak Harbor and the rest of Island County, Bosch’s selection is more than a line on a college funding list. It puts a local student and her school community in the middle of a regional scholarship program that links academic achievement with service, then turns that record into direct help with tuition and other early college costs. Cascadia Eye serves Western Washington, so the award reaches beyond Whidbey Island, but the impact lands locally when an Oak Harbor student gets recognized in public and backed with cash she can use right away.

The scholarship also points to a broader pattern in Island County education news: small awards can matter when they connect students to concrete next steps. Bosch’s interest in vision care gives the scholarship an added relevance, since it supports a student already moving toward a health-care field while signaling that her community sees value in that direction. That kind of recognition can carry weight for families watching college costs climb and for students trying to translate volunteer work, grades and extracurricular involvement into real support.

Cascadia Eye’s public scholarship materials describe the program as a way to support the next generation, and a 2024 announcement showed the scholarship was already in its 22nd year. For students and parents looking for similar opportunities, the key criteria are straightforward: senior status, a 3.25 GPA or better, residency in a Cascadia Eye service area and plans for full-time postsecondary study. The award amount is $1,500, and the program remains one of the recurring regional scholarships Island County students track each spring.