The man who is now known around campus for his trademark moustache and rolling suitcase, once had shoulder-length hair, but has had his facial hair since graduating high school, which required students to be clean shaven.

He let his two sons, Keith and Ryan, play around his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, often running down the long corridors and attending the chemical engineering department holiday parties.

“My graduate students would come over for parties and for Christmas and for Thanksgiving … It was interesting — there were people back there who now are much older, but they remember Ryan and Keith in diapers,” Brown said.

After Brown’s wife, Beverly, completed her post-doctorate degree at the medical school at Harvard University, she entered the medical field. The Brown’s oldest son, Ryan, was born in 1982 and Keith was born in 1984.

The young family still lived in their first home in Arlington until they decided to build a house in Winchester in 1985. Beverly said she and her husband “strongly believe in the public school system” and they found a strong district in Winchester.

“The house we had in Arlington had no yard,” Brown said. “We found a vacant lot in Winchester and built a house which we moved into in November ’85. We lived there until we moved here.”

The boys grew up in the Winchester house and attended school in the Winchester Public School system through high school, but Keith attended Montessori school for Kindergarten, Beverly added.

Through the schools, both of the Brown’s sons participated in the Boy Scouts organization.

“The troop in Winchester, 503, is a fantastic troop, just fantastic leadership, because they know what you have to do now when you’ve got a 16 year old boy,” Brown said. “How to focus for that last 12 months to convince them that it’s actually worthwhile to them.”

Keith and Ryan both achieved Eagle Scout status after working toward the six-year goal, something for which their parents say they are proud.

“It’s actually interesting — you have to have an enormous self-motivation at the end because you have to get all those merit badges,” Brown said.

Beverly Brown and her husband were involved in the troop’s leadership. She spent seven years as the camping coordinator for the troop, planning more than nine trips each year and attending a few of the trips as well.

In addition to camping trips, the family also traveled extensively around the world, including trips to Europe, Bali, Singapore and Australia.

This summer the Browns will be vacationing in the Bahamas for their wedding anniversary in May, and the entire family will be taking a trip to the Galapagos Islands, where the boys will scuba dive and their mother said she would snorkel.

“We are taking a big family vacation, with the boys and another family we have vacationed with over the years,” she said.

The family also took frequent trips to Cape Cod, where they used to own a condo and they now own a second home. After the Browns moved into the official presidential residence, the Sloane House, they stored many of their personal furniture and decorations at the Cape, including Keith and Ryan’s furniture, which the boys opted to not move to the Sloane House.

“The boys have their own rooms and they know they have a place here,” Beverly Brown said.

Although Boston University furnishes the home and helps with upkeep and decorating, the Browns have included a personal touch to the nineteenth-century home, including Beverly’s house plants and family photos scattered about. Beverly said the four-bedroom home was built in 1864 by the Lawrence family of Lawrence, Mass.

When the Browns moved into the home on Ivy Street in South Campus in August, she began a program that displays undergraduate and graduate students’ artwork around the home’s first floor. The pieces range from a giant yellow telephone painted on a massive canvas to an blue faces staring out of a ocean-blue canvas in the living room.

They host a reception each semester for the featured artists and frequently invite company, ranging from six-person private dinner to hundred-person receptions and cocktail parties.

“It is a wonderful place to entertain,” Beverly Brown said, “especially with the staff … It is a resource for the university.”

They are preparing for their biggest celebration yet, with Keith’s graduation from MIT with a degree in physics June 9.

Ryan graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in marine science, but now works in lighting and sound, an interest his mother said he cultivated in high school.

Although the move to Boston meant leaving the Winchester home they had lived in for 20 years, Brown said they had been considering moving into the city since Keith left for college.

“After the kids were out of the house, we were actually thinking about moving into the city anyway. That was a conversation we were having. Because we love the city,” Brown said. “Bev has worked for many years in the South End so we were in the city, and I worked in Cambridge, so we really wanted to move into the city. That was a really good part of everything. We walk around all over the place.”

Beverly, Ryan and Keith Brown will all be present at their father’s inauguration today and are on hand to support BU’s 10th president.