This is a video interview with Kelly Dockham, director of federal affairs for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Chris Simmons, vice president for government relations at Duke University, conducted by Emilie Dye, Perspectives co-editor. A transcript of the video is provided below.
About the Authors
Kelly Dockham is the Director of Federal Affairs for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has served in this role since January 2018. As director of federal affairs, she represents the University in advocacy before the federal government, regulatory agencies, and key policymakers. Kelly works closely with faculty, students, and administrators to develop and advance UNC Chapel Hill’s federal agenda. Kelly is a native of Oxford, Mississippi and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). During her time as an undergraduate at Ole Miss, Kelly was fortunate to intern for U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (MS) during his tenure as Chairman of the prominent U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations. She resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her husband, Matthew and daughter Charlotte.
Chris Simmons is the Vice President for Government Relations at Duke. He arrived at Duke in 2006 after serving in lead advocacy roles for the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the American Council on Education (ACE) in Washington, DC. Simmons is Duke’s principal point of contact and spokesperson on legislative and regulatory issues involving government relations at the state, federal, and international levels. He also oversees Duke in DC, Duke’s academic center and home for research and official events in Washington, DC. Prior to working in higher education advocacy, Chris was the policy analyst for the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. Simmons is a graduate of Willamette University where he majored in rhetoric and art, and became a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. He received his graduate degree from Harvard University.
Video Transcript below:
Emilie Dye (ED): Well, hi, everyone. My name is Emilie Dye, co-editor of Perspectives, and I’m joined today by Kelly Dockham from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills’ Federal Affairs Office, and Chris Simmons from Duke University’s Government Relations team. Just going to have a little bit of a discussion on our Perspectives topic this month about advocacy and student and university relations in that space. So maybe first to just kick it off, would love Kelly and Chris for you to just each briefly introduce yourself and describe a little bit about your current role at your respective university.
Kelly Dockham (KD): Chris, I’ll let you go.
Chris Simmons (CS): Okay. So, I’m the Vice President of Government Relations at Duke. I’ve been here 18 years. I oversee everything that goes on between the federal government and the university side of the institution. We also oversee state relations. We have a really active state relations program in Raleigh. And then, I also work on issues dealing with international governments. We have a number of global interests, and it requires us to work with governments of other countries, so I oversee that as well.
KD: Yeah. And Kelly Dockham, Director of Federal Affairs at UNC. Been here for almost nine years, hard to believe. Based on campus, but obviously travel back and forth to Washington, DC quite a bit, just about every week these days. My role, pan university, so the issues are very wide. It runs the gamut from federal research funding, student affairs issues, affordability, accessibility, athletics, tax, you name it. So, it’s a lot of fun, and can’t predict two weeks ahead as to what my time’s going to be devoted on. But so grateful to have a friend and colleague such as Chris Simmons over at Duke and his team, who I rely on heavily for help. So, thank you.
Dye: Thank you both so much and glad to have you. Can you just provide a little bit of context on the factors contributing to the current climate, sort of distrust that exists in higher education and why you think this shift matters?
CS: So, I think a couple of things. Just from a broader view, I think there’s a ton of distrust in institutions. And it’s not just higher education institutions, it’s Congress, it’s the church, it’s law enforcement. There’s distrust in the health system. And I think that, again, there’s this broader distrust of institutions, for lack of a better word.
I think there’s also a number of issues when you look at colleges and universities, that they’re politically aligned one way, mostly viewed as pretty liberal, that they’re not as accessible as we actually know they are. There’s a narrative out there that colleges and universities are incredibly expensive. Some of them are, but the majority of people who go to colleges and universities in this country are not the students that Kelly and I see every day. The majority of students that go to colleges and universities are older and go to regional, four-year public universities or community colleges, and that is really where the broad base of education is happening in higher education. And those places, I don’t think anyone could call elite or expensive, they’re just outstanding places to get an outstanding education.
KD: Yeah. And I think just to piggyback on Chris’s comments, which I agree with, from an outside perspective, I tell people all the time, we got to get out of this… Sorry, light saving, energy saving. Got to get outside of our higher education bubble. There’s a whole life, world, out there that people just don’t understand, don’t know exactly the impact that institutions in their state, the impact that they have within the state, region, and country broadly. And I think a lot of folks view it as a bureaucracy. A lot of folks don’t understand what these people do.
And so, I think it’s great to question exactly what these organizations, and is the system working and all of that. But that’s where our roles, Chris and I, working with alumni, our board of visitors, board of trustees, alumni, students, to really work with us on that messaging of exactly what these institutions do and how we help support, not only our current students and our alumni, but the citizens of the state, and helping get folks positioned into jobs, whether that be fellowships, apprenticeships, working with our community college system. So, just a lot of communication.
CS: And I don’t think that there’s… I would not argue with the idea that we’ve lost people’s trust. We’ve lost the public’s trust, and we’ve lost elected and appointed officials’ trust. And it matters, because we need them to trust us because we are the purveyors and leaders of knowledge in the world. Literally, the two universities that are on the screen are two of the best universities in the world, and we’re the ones that are investing in scientific research, we’re interested in facts, we’re interested in making the world a better place. And if people don’t trust us to do that, I don’t know who is going to do that.
ED: Yeah, that’s a great point, Chris. And Kelly, you started to speak a little bit to this, but would love to hear from you all what strategies you think might be essential for addressing that declining trust, particularly as it relates to your spaces in government relations, federal affairs. What do you think we can do about it?
KD: Yeah. Well, I think in our roles as the liaisons, the representatives for the university to our elected officials, Chris, more at the state and local level, whereas I’m focused just on our folks in Washington, it’s having a line of conversation, being able to have candid, thoughtful dialogue, transparency. Especially with us, UNC, being a public institution, we rely heavily on taxpayer support. And so as much as we can show how we are leveraging that support for the betterment and using it to better the state’s economy or society’s citizens, that message, it goes a long way, especially with our elected officials and staff, and especially when you can bring it home. It’s one thing to hear, oh, we’re doing research on child and maternal health, but it’s really something when we can break it down even further and put some faces with the projects and the funding there.
Also, talking about institutional investment, Duke and UNC Chapel Hill do such a great job of relying on the support from alumni, other donors so that we can make sure that we’re getting people who come from more non-traditional, underserved, first generation students, that finances should not be a barrier for these people to receive a degree. And so showing all the programs, such as we have the Carolina Covenant program, which is a hundred percent donor supported. And of course that mixed with the federal financial assistance and Pell. So that’s kind of how I go. But Chris, I’m rambling, so please jump in.
CS: No, I agree with all that. I think our job, the strategy that I always think about is: what are the stories that we tell that can be backed up by data, that we make sure we match those things up. Because the data we have is on our side, it’s just not penetrating. People’s livelihoods in so many aspects depend on our institutions, and it’s not just in healthcare where anybody who has the misfortune of getting ill in North Carolina, if it’s really serious, the first thing they think about is how do I get in at UNC? How do I get in at Duke to see a specialist? Because I know those places are the best equipped to save my life, life of my child, life of my spouse, my neighbor.
But it’s also, people depend on us as employers. We’re two of the largest employers in the state. Duke is the second largest private employer in the state, and we are an economic engine. Chapel Hill and Durham would be totally different places without our institutions there. We pump billions into the economy as employers, people coming to visit here. And then you start thinking about all of the companies and organizations that come out of our institutions that stay here in North Carolina and produce other jobs, help our economy, things like that. You go to other places without major universities in similar sized towns, they’re nothing like this. They’re nothing like this. This is a special place. So again, how do we back that up?
And then you start talking about it’s not just healthcare, and it’s not just as an employer, but people come to the University of North Carolina and they come to Duke and they might be a first time college student. It changes their life and their family’s life forever. It’s a change agent for those individuals. And so it’s really, really difficult when we hear, “So expensive to go to Duke, so expensive to go to Carolina.” But for a lot of families, Carolina and Duke are two of the least expensive places to go to school in the state, if not, and in the region. If you get admitted and you’re in a certain family bracket, the aid that comes both from the federal government and our institutions and the state make it totally affordable and we change lives.
ED: Yeah. Thank you both. Speaking a little bit more to the relationship that staff at universities with you all in your offices, and Chris, I think your comment here on what are the stories that we tell that are matched up by data sort leads nicely into this. But how can university staff work collaboratively with government entities, with your offices to help foster greater transparency or accountability and really help move that narrative for higher education?
KD: Well, first, I think always say, we always say we got to be singing from the same hymnal. All right? And so when our messaging’s all over the place, that’s not productive, that’s not going to resonate. So making sure that staff, faculty, students even, that we’re all communicating internally. Obviously, talking with our leadership on the campus to make sure that our priorities are all aligned because we want to be as coordinated as we possibly can because we know that that will resonate in a much stronger message there. So I would say that’s number one and so I’ll pause and let Chris kind of jump in if he has additional thoughts.
CS:Yeah, I think that the thing that staff at universities can do to help us the most is going back to my last point about telling stories and coming to us and saying, “Hey, I have this great kid. She’s from Wilmington, she’s doing amazing research. She’s on a Pell grant, would be a great story to share next time a federal official comes through or a member of Congress or our great senators or something like that.” So helping us connect with people that are really making the most of their time at our institutions and on our campus and making a difference, helping us tell that story.
The other part is getting our staff and our colleagues on our campuses to also think through things that they do, things that they promote, and thinking about it through a political lens in that sense of… And giving us a heads up. “Hey, we’re going to have a session at this event with a group of students where people are really going to bash one of the political parties.” Okay, is that a good use of time? Not from my perspective. When are you going to do it? How can we help frame it? How can we help talk about it? What are we going to do when the congresswoman calls and says, “I heard that they were talking about all these policies that I’m promoting.” So how do we work with people? Just awareness. But also, again, helping people think through what are good ideas and what are bad ideas.
KD: Again, I tell folks all the time, higher education is a non-partisan issue. So let’s just all work together to share exactly why higher education is so important and the funding that goes to these institutions, again, how it trickles down to the public and for the good of the state. To Chris’s point, anytime that we can personalize it and put a face with the institution, the better. And a lot of times Chris and I will get on the phone and say, “You know what? We don’t need to be the loudest voices on this, we need to be hearing from our elected officials, they need to hear from our graduate students, or they need to hear from the researchers who are actually in the lab doing this work.” But that’s how we all just work together. And again, we are here to complement and to help support and advance, but we can’t do that if we’re not aware.
ED: Yeah. Thank you both. I think I laughed because I feel like when thinking about interacting, I mean predominantly with undergraduate students that I work with, but with graduate and professional students too, helping to think ahead in some of those spaces and coach them through some of those… And even other staff, because it can be quite . But sort of shifting gears to talking a little bit about students. What should we be prioritizing to ensure that students who are coming through our institutions are equipped with the critical thinking skills necessary, just to challenge prevalent stereotypes about higher ed or even just, I mean, critical thinking skills… I was thinking about that even related to your example, Chris, about having people thinking about how things work, that even they might not realize.
CS: Yeah. I think one of the best things that we can do with our students is make sure that they have a lot of exposure to diversity of thought, and that there’s opportunities for exchange and hearing other people’s point of view. And sometimes it’s going to make you uncomfortable, sometimes it’s going to make you mad, sometimes you’re not going to like what you hear. But the only way that we can learn and grow and think about how we solve problems is not to be in our own little bubble, within our own little bubble, within our own little bubble on campus, and always surrounded by the same people that all think the same.
So I think anytime we can expose students, whether that’s bringing people to campus, whether it’s in a classroom, or encouraging students to get involved in their communities, doing internships, spending time outside of Chapel Hill and Durham, spending time in Halifax County, spending time in different parts of the state, I think that’s the best thing that we can do to help them think about their lives and our lives and our state in a different way. And that starts to help beat down the ivory tower, stereotypical, stuck in a bubble somewhere.
KD: It’s all about listening and understanding, therefore, you can then, if you’re an advocate or you’re there to try to win someone over or explain, you can’t do that if you don’t understand their viewpoint. You may not agree with it, like Chris said, but you need to be able to understand where folks are coming from. So then you can come in, have a thoughtful conversation. Now, you may not be able to move the needle much, but if you’re at least able to come in and provide some examples, folks will pay attention. But if you’re yelling at them or you’re just turned away completely, yeah, that’s not going to help anyone. So again, just being aware of what other viewpoints, thoughts are and then how best you can jump in and support your viewpoints.
ED: So narrowing our focus even a little bit more to thinking specifically about members of fraternities and sororities on our campuses. I think there’s a lot of thoughts, some real and some maybe not, but certainly some are, around access, affordability, elitism of fraternities and sororities, which… And some people think that about higher education, we’ve talked a little bit about. So how could staff or volunteers who work with our fraternities and sororities empower members to actively counteract some of those perceptions, and maybe not even just on the fraternity sorority level, but more broadly within higher education.
CS: So a couple of things that I think about is I think that there’s a perception that higher education is elite, out of touch, kind of this weird place, and sororities and fraternities kind of take that to the next level within that microcosm. And that you may go to a very prestigious institution, but then there’s this next level of, well, can I get into that fraternity or sorority which is just another level of elitism. And I don’t know how fraternities and sororities break that down.
I think one way is figuring out ways to make them more affordable for more students. I think that’s a barrier to broader participation in the Greek system. And so thinking about ways to do that, and I know some of them do. I think also back to what we were just talking about, all fraternities and sororities that I aware of and have been exposed to have pretty significant education programs where they expose members to different speakers and things like that.
And again, thinking about diversity of thought, bringing in people with different perspectives to talk about issues, everything from political issues to gender issues, to race issues. I think it’s just incredibly important to expose everyone to that. And it’s great to do it in the classroom, it’s great to do it when you’re on your internship, but also having them come into your chapter room and talk about these things and sponsor programs, I think is another great thing that fraternities and sororities can do.
And then the last thing I would say is how do you continue to battle the perception that you join, especially fraternity just to party, that it has to be more than that. And what are you doing to really show your relevancy to why it’s important to be involved in a fraternity and sorority during these four years, and how does that, not only, does it make you a better person, what are you taking away from that and does it improve your community? And if you say no to those things, then I think you have a problem.
KD: Well said, Chris. I have nothing else.
ED: Yeah, I feel like that’s a nice-
CS: And Emilie, and I’ve texted with you and talked to you about, I say this as a total fraternity guy from college.
ED: Yeah, no, people who have worked with me, particularly as it relates to our fraternities and sororities, know that I often say that I am one of the toughest critics probably because I know how impactful they can be when done well. So I think it’s totally right. So those are all the scheduled questions that I had for you all. Is there any final thoughts or things that this might have brought up that you just wanted to share with on this topic before we wrap up?
CS: I guess the only other thing I would say is that I think fraternities and sororities, and some of them do this, but have the great potential to be change agents on their campuses and in their community. And I think the more that they think about getting involved, standing up for the values that they believe in, joining forces with other student groups, faculty, community groups to work on issues, whether it’s food insecurity or at the climate or homelessness or whatever it is, I just think the better the individuals, the system, the Greek system, and frankly, our communities would be if more fraternities and sororities did more of that.
ED: Well, thank you Kelly and Chris for joining and for chatting a little bit, giving a sort of… I like to think of this as sort of a peek behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz analogy there maybe. So hopefully people who are listening to this recording can just see a little bit about another space within their institution or where they could be partnering a little bit more, but also just hopefully thinking a little bit differently about how they’re advising the groups and students. So again, thank you both so much and really appreciate it.
KD: Thank you.
CS: Thank you.
