By Brady Extin | The Times-Post
PENDLETON — Camille Yancey had known for a while what she wanted to do after high school, she just didn’t know where.
Purdue University and Ball State University were the two schools the Pendleton Heights senior was looking into attending, but after news received in early December, her number one choice — Butler University — is back on the table.
In a surprise ceremony at the high school, Yancey was awarded a 2024 Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship by Madison County Community Foundation.
The scholarship, considered among the most prestigious and competitive scholarships available, is awarded annually to two students from Madison County. Students receiving the scholarships are provided with full tuition, fees, and a $900 stipend for books and equipment for four years of full-time, undergraduate study at an in-state school.
“With the Lilly Scholarship I’ve been looking a lot more into Butler because it’s a great school and they have a really good physician assistant postgraduate program that I’m interested in,” Yancey said. “It was always out of my price range, but now the scholarship would cover the tuition and Butler would cover room and board. I’m able to go to a school that I had first ruled out because of cost and go with my original plan.”
Yancey, who wants to enter the medical field, isn’t fully set on Butler, but with the newly acquired scholarship, it seems to check all of the boxes in what she’s looking for in her post-secondary education.
“I was thinking about Ball State or Purdue for a while. It was more of a cost thing for why I was looking at other schools,” Yancey said. “But I’m still not fully set on Butler yet; it just seems like the ideal choice now.”
As one of two recipients from Madison County, Yancey beat out 79 other applicants from the county for the scholarship.
For Yancey, the process started when the top 10% of students at Pendleton Heights were invited to apply for the scholarship through an online application where she had to list the extracurriculars she is involved in and the volunteer work she does, along with answering other questions and writing an essay.
For her essay, Yancey wrote how she would use her degree to help better her community.
She hopes to earn an undergraduate degree in health science, before entering a physician assistant program.
“My dermatologist is a physician’s assistant and she’s talked to me a lot about the job, and how much she loves it. I’ve seen kids from Butler that intern there, too,” Yancey said. “The help that she’s given me with my skin, and the great relationship that we have where it’s very open and we keep trying new things, I want to be able to do that for other people in the community someday.”
A committee with Madi-
son County Community Foundation trimmed the
initial pool of applicants down to nine based on
essay and application.
From there, in-person interviews at Anderson Community Building helped decide the two recipients.
“I had no idea,” Yancey said. “I was very shocked when I got the first call back that I was one of the finalists, and then to actually get it I was very surprised.”
Along with Yancey, Alexandria senior Seth Chester was the other Madison County recipient.
