Tell City senior Aniksha Kashyab named Perry County Lilly Scholar

Tell City High School senior Aniksha Kashyab was named Perry County’s 2026 Lilly Endowment Community Scholar, a scholarship that covers full tuition and required fees plus up to $900 a year for books and equipment for four years of undergraduate study. The Perry County Community Foundation said the program can be used at an accredited Indiana public or private nonprofit college or university, including Indiana University Bloomington.

For Perry County families, the most important part of the award is the cost it removes from the college equation. Lilly Endowment says the scholarship does not pay for room, board or travel, but it does remove the biggest fixed expense for many students: tuition. The statewide program, administered by Independent Colleges of Indiana, has been operating since 1998 and has awarded scholarships to more than 5,000 Indiana students since then.

Kashyab said she plans to attend Indiana University Bloomington on a pre-optometry track with a major in neuroscience. She also said she hopes to open her own clinic and eventually return to Perry County to provide accessible care. That makes her selection more than a personal milestone for Tell City High School. It also shows how a county scholarship can feed the local pipeline, helping a student move from Perry County classrooms to an Indiana university and, later, back into the community as a health professional.

The selection process was competitive. Perry County Community Foundation said the committee reviewed academic performance, school and community activities, essays, special circumstances and a finalist interview before forwarding the final nominee to the statewide program. Applicants for the 2026 scholarship had to be Indiana high school seniors graduating by 2026 who planned to pursue full-time baccalaureate study in Indiana, and the local deadline was Aug. 25, 2025.

The foundation has used scholarship support as a steady part of its work in the county. In a recent year, it said it awarded more than $63,000 in scholarships to 26 students. Kashyab’s selection adds another name to that record and gives younger students a clear example of what the Lilly process rewards: strong grades, broad involvement, thoughtful essays and a plan that connects college study to service at home.