A Pittsburgh native has been named chancellor of the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

J. Keith Motley will officially assume the office at the school's commencement ceremony Friday, becoming the first African American to hold the top job at Boston's only public university.

The school's Boston campus, which has 12,500 undergraduate and graduate students, is the second-largest in the University of Massachusetts system. Amherst is its largest.

"I want to make sure the excellence we have stays on the level of private institutions in Boston," said the 1973 Peabody High School graduate.

Dr. Motley joined the administrative staff at UMass Boston in 2003 as vice chancellor of student affairs. He was named interim university chancellor in 2004, and served a year in that post before becoming vice president for business, marketing and public affairs in 2005. Previously, he held a variety of student service positions at his alma mater, Northeastern University.

Although he left Pittsburgh years ago to pursue a career in higher education, Dr. Motley rarely misses a chance to publicly reflect on his roots growing up in Garfield and the solid academic foundation he received in Pittsburgh Public Schools.

His mother and several family members still live here and he visits at least three times a year for weddings, graduations, birthdays and anniversaries. Every year on July 4 he attends a family reunion at his mother's home in Penn Hills.

"I didn't know exactly what he'd do, but I knew he'd be something great," said Cornelia Williams, 73, his mother. "He was always a very good speaker and a lot of people thought he'd be a preacher."

As the second-oldest of five children raised by a single mother, Dr. Motley grew up poor but determined to succeed by obtaining a good education. He was the 6-foot-8 bookworm and basketball star who also was the top violin player in the school symphony.

After high school, he attended Northeastern University on a full basketball scholarship, and in 1999 was inducted to its basketball Hall of Fame.

John Clark, a childhood friend who also grew up in Garfield, played a key role in getting Dr. Motley recruited at Northeastern.

"The way we grew up so poor, it made us hungry," said Mr. Clark, who owns John J. Clark & Associates, a professional services firm in Forest Hills. "Every opportunity I ever knew he had he either nailed it or almost nailed it."

Today, Dr. Motley rubs elbows with members of the Kennedy family and other Bostonians through his position at the university and various organizations. He golfs with the former National Basketball Association star Julius Erving.

"I never knew what I didn't have until I went to college and someone told me," Dr. Motley said. "In Pittsburgh, I was always busy being happy and loved and trying to do something to better myself.

"I've still got love for Pittsburgh. It's a really special place in my heart because my mother and my family is still there."

First Published: May 26, 2007, 3:15 a.m.