Photos: 2014 UAA Fall Commencement

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Nursing student Bessareen Gonzalez celebrates with more than 300 students who walked across the stage during UAA's first graduation in the Alaska Airlines Center on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2014. It was the first graduation on campus since 1987, and first fall graduation in almost 30 years.

More than 300 students walked across the stage during a commencement ceremony at the University of Alaska Anchorage on Sunday -- the university's first at the newly-opened Alaska Airlines Center and the first fall graduation in nearly 30 years.

Since 1987, the university has hosted commencement ceremonies at Sullivan Arena after growing out of what is now known as the Wells Fargo Sports Complex on the UAA campus. The Sullivan Arena ceremonies were held only once each year, in the spring.

But last spring, the university "just about hit capacity" at Sullivan Arena, said Chancellor Tom Case.

That pressure made the September grand opening of the 5,000-seat Alaska Airlines Center all the more timely. As well as bringing commencement proceedings back to the UAA campus, the university is now able to hand out degrees to students who have completed course requirements mid-year, Case said.

"It also gives (students) the chance to walk across the stage and be recognized by families and everybody while the accomplishment is still very fresh," Case added.

The commencement speaker, Vernon Smith, shared the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 and set up UAA's experimental economic laboratory the following year. At the ceremony, Smith, currently a professor at Chapman University in California, became the first person to receive both a Meritorious Service Award and an Honorary Doctor of Letters.

The mix of graduates included 863 undergraduates, 85 certificates, 150 master degrees and one doctorate degree.