Students spend a lot of time at Delta Hall, which has been the home base for UGA activity in Washington since 2015. But the university has had a presence in the capital for more than 25 years.
It’s only gotten stronger over time.
In 1997, UGA launched the Congressional Agricultural Fellowship program, which brings UGA students to Capitol Hill to serve as agricultural liaisons. In 2002, Jere W. Morehead JD ’80, then the director of the Honors Program, expanded UGA’s footprint with the Honors in Washington summer internship program, which DeMaria was hired to lead.
Over time, other UGA schools and colleges initiated their own programs, and in 2008, then-Vice President of Instruction Morehead made these opportunities available to all undergraduate students through the Washington Semester Program and put DeMaria in charge.
UGA established a home in a building called The Congressional, but it lacked the common area and modern classroom space to ensure students connected with each other and the learning experience.
With the limitations at The Congressional and rising housing costs in D.C., Morehead and Bill Young, the UGA Foundation chair at the time, agreed the university needed a new space.
A building a few blocks away was identified as a possible new home. The three-story, 20,000-square-foot building was once a church society and club. When Morehead and Young toured the facility, they saw a lot of promise.
The purchase and renovation of Delta Hall were funded by private gifts to the UGA Foundation; not a single state dollar was used on the facility.
Allison Ausband ABJ ’83, a senior vice president at Delta Air Lines and the current UGA Foundation chair, helped secure a $5 million grant from the Delta Air Lines Foundation to support UGA in Washington. Delta Hall was named in honor of that gift.
