Senior Vice Provost for Institutional Strategy and Analysis Margery Overton will retire effective May 1, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Warwick Arden announced today.
“For more than forty years, Margery Overton has had an indelible impact on NC State, from teaching and research to academic leadership and the implementation of many critical university-level strategic initiatives,” said Arden. “As she moves into the next chapter of her life, I want to congratulate her on an outstanding career and wish her and her family the best.”
Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
Overton joined NC State’s Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering as an assistant professor in 1982, and was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor in 1988. There, her research focused on coastal processes, beach and dune erosion, coastal hazards identification and response strategies to improve the resilience of coastal environments using modeling techniques appropriate for both short-term (storm-driven) and long-term (sea-level rise) change.
In 2005, she became the first woman to be promoted to professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. This historic first helped pave the way for future female faculty in her department and across the university.
Faculty-Focused with an Eye Toward the Future
She served as chair of the NC State faculty from 2009-2011. During this time, she provided strategic support in Arden’s transition from interim to permanent provost, and became vital in NC State’s strategic planning efforts. Along with the provost, she co-chaired the strategic planning process for The Pathway to the Future: NC State’s 2011-2020 Strategic Plan.
Many in the campus community have Overton to thank in part for her role in the formation of the College of Sciences. From 2011-2012, she chaired the Academic Science Program Task Force, which recommended the creation of the college, which today boasts more than 610 faculty, staff and postdocs, and more than 4,200 students.
Her consistent commitment to serving NC State faculty led to her appointment as part-time special assistant to the provost for the 2012-2013 academic year. Leadership successes in this role included a review of the structure of then University Planning and Analysis, which led to the unit being replaced by an expanded, robust Office of Institutional Research and Planning; as well as the development of NC State’s first strategic plan implementation plan for FY 2012-2014 and metrics for the overall strategic plan. Overton was reappointed as special assistant to the provost for the following academic year to continue her work within the Office of Academic Strategies and Resource Management under the leadership of then Senior Vice Provost Duane Larick.
Overton’s tireless efforts in these areas led to her being appointed vice provost for academic strategy in 2014. In this position, her responsibilities included the review of strategic planning metrics and trends at college and departmental levels and the development of the FY 2015-2017 strategic plan implementation plan. The Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program, a strategic interdisciplinary faculty cluster hiring initiative at NC State, became part of her portfolio in 2015, with her facilitating the hiring process for clusters and the allocation of startup and space and for the newly-hired faculty. Upon the retirement of Senior Vice Provost for Institutional Research and Planning Mary Lelik in 2019, Overton was appointed interim senior vice provost for Institutional Research and Planning.
Strategic Success
Beginning in fall 2019, Overton again co-chaired the university strategic planning process with Arden, which resulted in the creation of NC State’s 2021-2030 strategic plan, Wolfpack 2030: Powering the Extraordinary and later the FY 2022-2024 and FY 2025-2027 strategic plan implementation plans.
Just as the COVID pandemic began in March 2020, Arden combined Overton’s two portfolios, academic strategy and institutional research and planning, into one and appointed her as Senior Vice Provost for Institutional Strategy and Analysis, with the Office of Institutional Research and Planning transitioning to Institutional Strategy and Analysis (ISA). In this role, Overton has established ISA as the university’s authoritative source for institutional reporting and analytics, with the unit providing consistent and reliable data to inform and support effective decision-making across all campus constituencies and levels of governance.
Under Overton’s leadership, ISA provides up-to-date, accurate and timely data on students and university personnel, including admissions, enrollment, academic progress, student and alumni interests and satisfaction, and faculty productivity and workload. ISA also works to facilitate strategic planning, program assessment, surveys and university progress toward strategic goals. Recent key ISA efforts have included the development and implementation of the Wolfpack 2030 metrics dashboard in 2023 and the creation of a formal University Data and Analytics unit in 2024 to improve and expand data governance, institutional analytics and analytics enablement.
With all of Overton’s academic and strategic service to the university, she was quintessential in helping other areas of the campus grow as well. Appointed by Arden and Executive Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Charles Maimone, she led the Engineering Expansion Working Group and continues to work closely with university and college leaders on NC State’s efforts to increase the number of undergraduate and graduate College of Engineering students to meet current and future industry demands.
“I am very confident when I say that her leadership has touched nearly every corner of NC State’s campus over the past 40 years,” said Arden.
Overton received her Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and Ph.D. in civil engineering from Duke University.
Provost Arden has appointed Associate Vice Provost for University Data and Analytics Mckinney Austin to lead Institutional Strategy and Analysis in the interim, effective May 1.
Austin leads the University Data and Analytics unit, with responsibility for university-level data and analytics functions, including the oversight of the Data Governance, Research and Analysis, Institutional Reporting, Business Intelligence and Data Science teams. He joined ISA as director of institutional analytics in 2021, was appointed assistant vice provost for institutional analytics and data governance in 2022, and was named to his current position in 2024. Prior to joining NC State, Austin led the central data governance and business intelligence functions in the Office of Data Management and Analytics Services at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Austin received a Bachelor of Arts in economics and a juris doctor from Indiana University at Bloomington, and Master of Public Affairs degree with a concentration in public policy analysis from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
