John Harwood is an associate professor emeritus in the College of IST.

Harwood was Penn State's representative for the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's Learning Technologies Initiative. He chaired the Implementation Committee of Penn State's student-computing initiative, and served on the Computing and Information Systems Committee of the Faculty Senate. In addition, he was an active member of the Teaching and Learning Consortium, which sought to improve the environment for teaching and learning at Penn State, as well as an active member of the New Media Centers. Harwood served as editor of the "Electronic Campus" section of a Jossey-Bass journal, About Campus.

Harwood's main research interests were the humanities—including computing in the humanities. He researched 17th-century and 18th-century British literature; technologies for teaching and research in the humanities; information technology and its cultural implications; the history of science, especially the early Royal Society and its major Fellows (Boyle, Hooke, Newton, Evelyn, and others); and the history of rhetoric and technology. His current research examined John Evelyn (1620-1706), a founding member of the Royal Society. More information about Dr. Harwood's research as well as a list of major publications could be found on his website. Harwood taught a broad range of courses at Penn State. As a former director of composition programs, he was interested in all kinds of writing courses and in how information technology enhanced teaching and learning. He taught several courses drawing on web-based resources to support teaching and learning. Most recently, he taught a seminar in the 18th-century British history of ideas.