Dr. William A. Person received his bachelor's degree from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Georgia in Athens. He has served as AGEM Principal Investigator at Mississippi State University since the inception of the program in 1999. Dr. Person is an active recruiter of doctoral students in the STEM areas. He has been on the faculty at Mississippi State in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction since 1977 and holds rank of Professor of Curriculum and Instruction.

He has taught several undergraduate and graduate courses in his discipline, including the History of Education in the United States, Issues in Education, Foundations of Education, Education and Society, Problems of Secondary Education, and has supervised and directed numerous student teachers completing practical classroom internships. In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Professor Person served the university as Associate Dean of the Graduate School from 1991 until 1999. Since that time, he has served as Interim Director of Graduate Studies at the university.

Professor Person's research interests have focused on topics such as cultural diversity in American Education, southern educational reform, the involvement of Black educators in the Mississippi civil rights movements, pupil attitudes toward standardized testing, and pupil evaluation of teaching. Some of his most recent publications are included in an edited work by MSU Professors Robert L. Jenkins and Mfanya Tryman entitled Malcolm X Encyclopedia.