A native of Ohio, Bartley was raised in Morrow - a rural community north of Cincinnati. In high school, Bartley was actively involved in multiple organizations, including Science Olympiad, Academic Team, National Honor Society (President), Ohio Boys' State, and student tutoring. He graduated with honors as salutatorian and 3rd in his class.

Bartley entered the University of Cincinnati in 1998 and majored in Computer Engineering. During the five-year engineering program at UC, Bartley had the opportunity to work as a co-op for some of the nation's largest corporations, including GE Aircraft Engines and Rockwell Automation. Throughout his undergraduate years, Bartley was a member of the Honors Scholar Program and was consistently named to the Dean's List. For his senior project, Bartley helped to develop a full-functional web-based email system (webMAIL) with enhanced spam-filtering techniques.

Initially involved in the Dual Admissions Program with the College of Medicine, Bartley decided that he wanted to be involved in some level of education and research. After graduating with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Engineering in June 2004, Bartley was admitted into the PhD program in Computer Science/Engineering in the College of Engineering.

Bartley selected Database Systems as his area of research and is under the guidance of Dr. Karen Davis. He is currently involved in research pertaining to the Semantic Web and is hoping to have a dissertation proposal together by the spring of 2005. He is currently a student member of both ACM and IEEE.

Bartley joined Project STEP in the summer of 2003. His initial role was that of technology consultant, and for the 2003-2004 school year he assisted the project staff with technology-related issues. In addition to creating and maintaining the official STEP website, Bartley developed several pieces of custom web-based software to help facilitate the execution of the project. He helped the Fellows with their technology issues, and supported the Fellows by contributing ideas of how to integrate technology with their classroom lesson plans.

Wanting to be more involved in active teaching in the classroom, Bartley joined Project STEP as a full Fellow in the fall of 2004. He is currently working in various classrooms at the Hughes Center in the Cincinnati Public School District. For his second year as a Fellow, Bartley was switched to Western Hills Design Technology in the fall of 2005. He is currently working with four sections of Algebra I.

When he's not working with STEP or his research, Bartley enjoys participating in a variety of activities. As a musician, Bartley has competed in and won several local and state piano competitions. He likes oil painting and sketching, and enjoys going to the gym. Bartley is a certified group fitness instructor (AFAA) and has advanced training in Pilates. He is also a certified Pilates Reformer trainer.