Roni Dudley-Cowans, BE Administrative Officer, is the glue that makes this place run smoothly, the gatekeeper of departmental funds and, in many ways, the living history of this young department. “I have had four different jobs at MIT and I’ve never left my desk,” says Roni, who has been in this department longer than most sophomores have been alive. From the Program and Division of Toxicology to BEEH, then BEH, and eventually ending up as our beloved Department of Biological Engineering, Roni has been here through it all and still loves being a part of the Course 20 community.
Although Roni stumbled into her long career at MIT through a colleague she met while working at Tufts, she has stayed because of the wonderful people and the welcome variety that is innate to her position. “Your day is not your own when you are an administrator,” claims Roni. “The day can be anything.” From managing toilet crises to high-level financial strategy, Roni is someone who gets it all done and somehow always appears calm and polished; she attributes much of her success to her top-notch team.
Back in the early days, Roni recalls that the department only had about eight faculty members and that it had a much cozier feel. “I remember the holiday parties,” shares Roni. “They were in dorms with pianos and kids.” While Roni misses some of the intimacy of the past, she is impressed with what BE has become. “It is incredible that other institutions call and ask for advice, looking to us as a model,” Roni admits. “I feel very fortunate to be a part of this department.”
Managing crises seems to be in Roni’s family, as her husband of nineteen years, Tobias Cowans, acts as the Readiness and Emergency Management for Brockton Public Schools in Brockton, where they live. Roni is as involved with her neighborhood and church as she is with all things BE; outside of MIT, however, she is known as “Auntie Roni.” Although she has fifteen nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, Roni considers her “kids” to be the children in the Charles Street AME Church in Roxbury, where she has been a member for over thirty years.
Roni loves her job here at MIT, but her true passion is gospel music. Despite her lack of musical training, Roni feels as though her talent with music is a “gift of God.” A natural at managing people and tackling projects, Roni was quickly asked to transition from being a member of the choir to being its director. Now she leads both the adult and children’s choirs for her congregation.
Through her connections with church and from her husband’s deep ties to the Brockton area, Roni has become a civic role model and has earned the YMCA Black Achievement Award for her community engagement. One of Roni’s favorite volunteer experiences was when she served for a week on an all-women’s building crew for a Habitat for Humanity home. “I remember putting in the windows,” Roni recalls. “As I was up high on a ladder, putting in a window, I realized I might be too old for this…I realized I don’t think I like heights too much.” Despite her newfound fear of falling, Roni would definitely join a Habitat crew again and feels proud every time she drives by the home she helped build in her town.
Having grown up as one of five “army brat” children in her U.S. military family, it is no surprise that Roni gives so generously of herself to her community. With roots in El Paso, Texas, she lived for a few years in Germany, but spent the majority of her childhood in Aberdeen, Maryland. Roni attended college at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and later received her MBA at Suffolk University here in Boston.
What started out as a one-year experiment to live in a big city has now become decades in the Boston area. Roni seems quite happy with the life that she has built here but admits, however, that her true bliss is having one of those rare moments when she can tune out her to-do list and lounge on her patio. With a perfectly sweetened cup of java and a lap-full of favorite magazines, Roni cherishes moments when she can just breathe. “We are all so busy,” Roni notes. Despite thriving in the hustle of BE’s academic whirlwind, nothing is better to Roni than a moment “filled with peace on the patio.” This summer, Roni hopes to soak in a moment of tranquility before September finds us back in thick of it on campus.