Academy for Math Engineering and Science AC ADE MY 5715 South 1300 East Salt Lake City, UT 84121 Phone: 801.278.9460 FOR MATH, ENGINEERING & SCIENCE Fax: 801.277.3527 November 30, 2015 To whom it may concern, 1 am pleased to recommend Tarun Sunkaraneni to be the math Sterling Scholar. | have known Tarun since ‘August 2013 as his math teacher. Tarun is a Senior at the Academy for Math, Engineering & Science (AMES), an early college public charter school with stricter graduation requirements than the state of Utah, In this environment of high expectations Tarun has emerged as a leader in his class, both in and out of the academic classroom. | got to know Tarun pretty well when | would facilitate the after-school peer tutoring program at AMES. Tarun was always there helping other students with math and science. He has also taken a volunteer position tutoring refugee students in math, and he told me he really enjoys the challenge of being patient while working with students who do not have an easy time understanding the concepts. He enjoyed explaining the mathematics in ways he thought would help them. One reason I think Tarun is perfect to be the math Sterling Scholar is that he has prioritized math in his coursework and his extracurricular activities. He advanced through all the math classes AMES had to offer, taking Calculus | and Calculus Il his junior year. Because he still wanted to take more math classes, he is now taking Calculus Ill on campus at the University of Utah and is doing very well in the class. | have answered a few of Tarun’s questions about the class and can tell that he has a solid understanding of even the very advanced topics of using calculus and matrices to describe 3-dimensional graphs. He has also been an important member of the Robotics team at AMES and is probably the most advanced computer programmer ‘we have at our school, which is even more impressive because he is seff-taught in programming. | was Tarun’s teacher in Honors Precalculus in 2014-15. Not only did he maintain a nearly perfect grade in the class all year, | also saw him studying extra math for fun out of books and sometimes answered his questions ‘about what he would read. | found him to be a curious and creative problem solver. He loves a challenge and gets excited when he is working on a problem that connects multiple concepts in an application. He is goal oriented and focused, and his strong work ethic combined with his intelligence have made him one of the top students in his graduating class overall, and certainly the top of his class in mathematics. Tarun has such potential to do great things in the STEM field and he deserves every opportunity. I give him my ighest recommendation for math Sterling Scholar with no reservations. Sincerely,