Kurt VanLehn

Timeline

1. 1974–1983

   An MIT PhD on student bugs

   After a mathematics bachelor's degree and student work at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, he moves to MIT in 1974 to work on a degree in artificial intelligence. He works with John Seely Brown at BBN and then at Xerox PARC, where Brown's group finds systematic bugs in how students solve arithmetic problems, and his thesis program models the impasse-driven learning that produces them. He earns his computer science PhD at MIT in 1983.

2. 1985–1990

   Mind Bugs at Carnegie Mellon

   In 1985, he joins Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor in the departments of psychology and computer science. There he wraps up his work on arithmetic bugs and writes Mind Bugs: The Origins of Procedural Misconceptions, published in 1990 as a Bradford Book. The book describes Sierra, a computer program that simulates learning and predicts the procedural errors students make.

3. 1990–2008

   Professor at Pittsburgh

   He moves to the University of Pittsburgh in 1990 and works in its Learning Research and Development Center, shifting from cognitive modeling to tutoring systems. His Andes tutor coaches college students through difficult physics problems with hints and feedback at every step. He founds and co-directs two National Science Foundation research centers, Circle and the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, the second with Kenneth Koedinger of Carnegie Mellon.

4. 1996–1997

   A CASBS fellowship

   During the 1996–97 fellowship year, he is a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences while based at the University of Pittsburgh.

5. 2008–2015

   Tooker Chair at ASU

   He joins Arizona State University in 2008, and in 2013 he is appointed the Diane and Gary Tooker Chair for Effective Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. By 2015, he heads two multi-million-dollar projects: FACT, a $7 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project on step-based tutoring for classroom group work, and Dragoon, a $2 million STEM grant challenge in which students build models with an intelligent tutor.

6. 2011

   Tutors that match human tutors

   In November 2011, at the 19th International Conference on Computers in Education in Chiang Mai, Thailand, he gives a keynote asking how intelligent tutoring systems can become even better. He argues that human tutors and intelligent tutoring systems have the same effect size, 0.75 standard deviations above no-tutoring instruction.

7. As of October 2026

   Emeritus professor at ASU

   He is an emeritus professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University. His recent research focuses on intelligent tutoring systems, classroom orchestration systems, and other intelligent interactive instructional technology, and he has published more than 135 peer-reviewed publications.