Washington Program assistant Kaylea Happell ’08 Each week students hear from and question DC insiders
The Fast Track to DC Don Sisson ’05, a native of Albion, NY, transferred to The College at Brockport in 2002, changed his focus from psychology to political science, enrolled in the fall ’04 Washington Program, and graduated in 2005. It’s a timeline not unlike many students who come to The College at Brockport, right? Except when you add to it that today he is the Director of Legislative Operations on the House Committee on Rules, the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives; then you have a success story that grabs you by the lapels and shouts, “You’re not going to believe this!” “When I was in high school, I never thought college was for me,” Sisson says, “I actually was talked into it by my friend’s father’s girlfriend. After I started, I just kept moving forward.” And move forward he did. Enrolling in Genesee Community College and then transferring to The College at Brockport, Sisson first focused on a degree in psychology, more specifically neuropsychology. At the same time he was working full time as an aide in a Lifetime Assistance group home in Rochester
and planning on graduate work in psychology. But life has a funny way of taking unexpected twists and turns. For Sisson, that came as a realization that he preferred government and politics to psychology. “I left a comparative politics class and went to my biopsychology class. The professor went to put an image of the human brain on the overhead projector but there was a map still on the projector from the previous class. I realized that there was something about the map that was more interesting to me than the picture of the brain. I really wanted to learn more about world governments.” And psychology’s loss became political science’s gain. Political science professor Dena Levy convinced Sisson that the Washington Program was absolutely essential for him. So Sisson scraped to get the money for the semester in Washington, tapping into savings and retirement funds, and took an internship on the House Committee on Ways and Means. “The day after my last day at the internship I was packed and ready to move back to Albion when I got a call about an opening on the Rules Committee — it was down to the wire but after three interviews in one day I got the job,” Sisson remembers. The demands of both working and going to school full time were good practice when working on the recent Stimulus Bill legislation proved to be an exercise in burning the midnight oil for Sisson and his staff. The bill was on the fast track and its complexity meant a series of 18-hour days for Sisson. “It was the largest and most complex bill we’ve ever worked on,” he says. Sisson’s job also offers him the opportunity to continue his interest in world governments. “I was able to go on a Congressional Staff Delegation trip to China last year. That was a great experience and I hope to go to Germany in the next few months through the State Department to visit the Bundestag and Bundesrat — these are places that I could only read about as an undergrad. My DC experience has been very rewarding,” he says.
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