Dr. Hartness has a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas (2004) and a Master of Science from Texas A&M University. All college degrees are in computer science. He has taught for ten years in higher education, not including four years as a teaching fellow while pursuing graduate degrees.  Dr. Hartness primarily teaches Artificial Intelligence, COBOL programming and advanced information systems processing, and Programming in Java or C++.

As undergraduate advisor, Dr. Hartness is responsible for creating and filing degree plans with Computer Science majors and advising majors and minors in Computer Science.