Chapel Hill to Capitol Hill. UNC’s new office raises its profile in Trump-era DC
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- UNC opened a 10,000 sq. ft. Washington DC office to support federal engagement.
- The university signed a 12-year lease with $800,000 annual rent.
- UNC spent $685,000 on in-house lobbying in 2025, triple 2024 levels.
UNC-Chapel Hill is opening an official outpost in Washington, D.C., this week, an effort Chancellor Lee Roberts calls “long overdue.”
The new 10,000-square-foot office at the base of Capitol Hill will serve as a landing spot for students, faculty, and alumni in the nation’s capital. It’s also seen as an opportunity for Carolina to more effectively assert itself in national conversations — a place to host policymakers and a physical home for its lobbying efforts.
The university has a 12-year lease on the space at an annual rent of $800,000, according to spokesperson Kevin Best. He said it’s funded entirely by the university’s foundation, and no state dollars were used.
Now, the school will have a larger footprint in Washington, UNC director of federal affairs Kelly Dockham told The News & Observer. The space is home to a café, a classroom, a conference center, lockers, rooftop access, and other amenities for faculty, staff, and students who are visiting or spending the semester or summer in D.C. Dockham envisions hosting “salon-style” meals bringing together important people from Chapel Hill and Washington.
But prior to this announcement, UNC was already ramping up its D.C. presence in another sense.
In 2025, UNC spent $685,000 on its in-house lobbying endeavors, three times what the university spent the year before. In fact, it spent more in the second quarter of 2025 alone than it did in all of 2024 — a spending surge tied to President Donald Trump’s aggressive cuts to research and higher education funding.
UNC’s lobbying expenditures are not yet available for 2026. The university also contracts with outside lobbying firms in addition to its in-house work. And the disclosures include only lobbying of Congress, not of the executive branch.
Roberts said that when he took office, he was surprised UNC didn’t have a D.C. office. Many universities, like Duke, for example, do. He made it a priority to make it happen. One major reason? UNC’s largest alumni population is no longer in New York or California, but rather in the Washington area, according to Dockham.
Ever the real estate man, Roberts also pointed out that it’s a “really good time to be leasing office space in D.C., especially when we signed the lease about 18 months ago.”
Now, Dockham finally has a permanent office in the district, and will no longer have to take meetings from hotel lobbies and cafés. She often brings faculty up from Chapel Hill to serve as subject-matter experts in congressional hearings. She also regularly meets with alumni and other stakeholders in Washington.
She sees the office as a representation of something bigger: a chance to have a louder voice in the national dialogue.
“We are [now] so closely located to Capitol Hill that we can have really thoughtful discussions on the policies that are taking up the most oxygen on Capitol Hill,” Dockham said. “We are connecting Chapel Hill to Capitol Hill, having our campus-based folks come up here, and be able to sit and talk with congressional staff [on topics like] AI or rural health care development. The world’s our oyster, basically.”
“Having a space here that ours, that’s going to be a game changer. It will allow for more flexibility and more opportunities to do more engagement, whether it’s funding for a particular program or talking about authorizing legislation that’s taking place, and just in general, thoughtful conversations about how public institutions are partners with the federal government and with industry.”
According to 2025 lobbying records, UNC lobbied on issues like increased science and research funding, federal financial aid programs like Pell Grants, college athletics and compensation for student athletes, international education funding, visa processing, and defense and medical research.
The space will officially open on Thursday.
This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 10:53 AM.
