Bio
Dr. William Fleeson serves as Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence Initiatives and as the Hultquist Family Professor of Psychology in Wake Forest College. In this role, Will leads the development and coordination of the University’s academic AI strategy, working across schools, centers, and offices to advance the responsible use of AI in teaching, learning, and research. His work is anchored in a distinctive question: how AI can be used not only to guard against harm but to actively develop human capacities, strengthen critical thinking, and deepen the kind of education that defines a liberal arts university.
Will has been a faculty member at Wake Forest since 1996. He served as Special Advisor to the Provost for AI Initiatives during the launch of the University’s AI strategy and as a member of the AI Task Force. Beyond Wake Forest, he served as president of the Association for Research in Personality and has led major externally funded research collaborations, including the Science of Honesty Project. He earned his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan, and completed postdoctoral training in human development in Germany.
Will’s research examines personality, self-regulation, and moral character, with particular attention to the morally exceptional and to the close study of how people actually behave over time. His work has been recognized with the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Theoretical Innovation Prize and its Carol and Ed Diener Award in Personality Psychology, and has appeared in leading journals including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Personality, and the Journal of Research in Personality.
Areas of Responsibility:
- Wake Forest’s academic AI strategy
- AI Task Force
- Coordination of AI initiatives across teaching and faculty development, research, and student experiences
- Cross-campus AI grant, partnership, and fundraising development