UALBANY GRADUATION TO GET PERSONAL TOUCH.(MAIN)

Byline: CATHY WOODRUFF Staff writer

After a decade of off-campus pomp and circumstance at the Pepsi Arena, the University at Albany is moving its commencement back to the uptown campus and expanding festivities to provide more personal recognition of graduates.

``As we listened to students, the thing we kept hearing was a desire for the ceremony to be more individualized and more personal,'' said UAlbany President Karen Hitchcock.

But with close to 2,500 students receiving bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in recent years, and only one large commencement ceremony inside the Pepsi Arena, she said, it would have been virtually impossible to …