Earlier in the year, Ramakrishnan created the Ambassadors for Christ Club, hoping to promote Christian service around the area and involve students. Mr. Kevin Moore suggested creating a tutoring center to help Malvern students.

“Mr. Moore proposed an idea of tutoring interacting students including Malvern math students. We discussed it further with him and Vijay and I took on the role of setting up this club,” Balmer said.

While thinking of ways to get the center up and running, Balmer and Ramakrishnan met with  English Curriculum Coordinator Ms. Suzanne Sweeney, who is starting a writing center this year.

“She proposed that we combine the two and have separate calendars that function to set up tutoring events with students and a tutor who can help them with their math homework or prepare for a test,” Balmer said.

The program will use google calendar to organize and schedule meetings, working with virtual  and on-campus students. Ramakrishnan explains what an ideal session will look like.

“It’d be a one on one session where you and your tutor go over practice problems or homework,” he said. “The tutor will walk the [student] through it and teach the material, instead of doing it themselves.”

Mrs. Gabriella Toth is a math teacher and Christian Service Director at Malvern. As the supervisor to the math center, she discusses the importance of the tutor center. 

“The purpose of our student taught learning centers is to develop better problem solving and time management skills, as well as to inspire critical thinking, while fostering an environment where students feel comfortable to reach out for help from their friends,” Toth said.

Toth believes the students of the tutoring center are excellent workers and will lead it to success.

“A tutoring team is made up of a group of brilliant students who excel in advanced math courses and possess deeper analytical and social skills,” she said. “These [students] work together very well and they are good friends.”

Ramakrishnan hopes to find more tutors for the center. 

“There’s no real application process, but I would say that you should maintain good grades in a higher level course. Most of our guys are in either Honors Pre-Calculus or AP Calculus AB or higher,” he said.

Although a new space will be provided in the fall of next year, the tutoring center will utilize the main floor of CSI, and the leaders plan on when to open the math center. 

“We’re looking to start it and get it up and running in the middle of term three,” Ramakrishnan said.

Balmer looks forward to the center’s opening and hopes it will be beneficial for the students.

“I’m most excited about setting this up and letting everyone in the community know that this is an available resource. I think it’s a great idea that Vijay and I had and I hope that it can prove useful and that people take advantage of it,” Balmer said.