A group of former leaders of UMass Boston returned to the campus on Dorchester Bay on Tuesday morning and joined with current Chancellor Keith Motley at a roundtable dialogue described as “Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence.” The breakfast, held with some 150 guests in the third floor ballroom of Campus Center, was one of the final events of the university’s year-long observance of its first half century.

Motley was joined by former chancellors Robert Corrigan, Sherry Penney, JoAnn Gora, and Michael Collins for breakfast and dialogue to “honor the past, recognize the present, and realize the future of the University of Massachusetts Boston,” according to a printed invitation to the event. The one hour roundtable discussion was moderated by Dr. Jean F. MacCormack, President, Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United State Senate, and herself a former UMB interim chancellor and later the chancellor of UMass Dartmouth. Opening remarks were delivered by outgoing UMass President Robert Caret, who leaves next month to become chancellor of Maryland’s state university system.

The University’s Boston presence dates to June, 1964 when then-Governor Endicott Peabody signed into law a bill establishing UMass Boston. The first classes were held in 1965 in a recycled downtown office building at 100 Arlington Street . A subsequent legislative effort led by then-House Speaker Robert H Quinn and other Dorchester electeds etablished the new self-contained campus on the Columbia Point peninsula, and the first classes were held here in Dorchester in 1974.

The chancellors represent more than 35 years of leadership at the now-burgeoning campus, beginning in 1979 when Corrigan was installed. He was succeeded in 1988 by Penney, and after a brief interim period Gora was named chancellor from 2001-2004. Motley, who served as interim chancellor in 2005, was succeeded by Dr Michael Collins, a medical doctor who left in 2007 to lead the UMass Medical School. Chancellor Motley was inaugurated in 2007 and continues to serve in that post.