According to Boston College University Historian Thomas H. O’Connor, the Boston Citizen Seminars were founded in 1954 by then dean of the University’s business school, W. Seavey Joyce, and John T. Galvin because Joyce didn't care for how Boston looked when he flew into Logan Airport. The Seminars brought together Boston’s political, business, and academic leaders to discuss the problems and challenges facing Boston, as well as the opportunities and plans for its development. Speeches, panels, discussions, and workshops addressed the construction of Government Center; the extensions of the Red, Green, and Orange lines of the MBTA; interstate expressway extensions; development of "The Hub" of downtown Boston; Boston Harbor; mayoral elections; public housing; Boston schools; and other issues of urban development and redevelopment.

In the late 1950s, programming also included Educators' Economic Seminars for local teachers and Junior Seminars for high school students. These were arranged jointly by the New England Economic Educational Council, the Boston College School of Education, and the Boston College School of Business Administration. The Seminars became officially administered by the Boston College School of Management in 1968, when Joyce vacated his position as director to become the president of Boston College, and became part of the programming of the new Management Institute (which became the Management Center in 1979). After 1992, many of the functions of the Seminars were folded into the newly founded the Boston College Chief Executives Club, a knowledge-sharing and networking forum for business executives.

Sources:

"Boston College Chief Executives Club," Boston College. Accessed 2025 February 3. https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/carroll-school/sites/ceo-club.html.

Keyes, Raymond F. History of the College of Business Administration and School of Management, 1938-1978. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 1987.