Inna Sysevich

Biography

Raised mainly by her grandmother (her parents were working) in Kiev when it was still in the Soviet Union, Ms. Sysevich spent the first years of her life in an apartment unit with seven other families because living space was in short supply after World War II. (Dorm life at a boarding school later on seemed very natural to her!) Her education through college was, as she says, “very serious” because it was the Soviet system. The disaster at Chernobyl happened while she was preparing her second degree, and with her husband, she moved away from Kiev to a remote village, which is where she had her first job, teaching biology and chemistry at a small school. They returned to Kiev, where she had her daughter, and she continued to teach. In 1992, she and her family moved to the United States, where she participated in an intensive summer program at Bryn Mawr College for teachers of Russian. That fall she started teaching Russian at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover, New Hampshire. Three years later she came to Exeter’s well-established Russian program.

Ever since, Ms. Sysevich has been the backbone, heart and soul of the Russian program; she teaches all levels and is the adviser to the Russian Club. One of her most cherished roles here was being dorm head of Abbot Hall (a boys dorm) for 12 years. She has also been a reader for the Admissions Office for many years, a job she sees as an important contribution to the decision-making process.

With her husband, Ms. Sysevich loves to kayak on nearby lakes. She also likes to travel, read world literature, and keep up with world economics and politics.