ORONO – The new campus minister at the Catholic Newman Center ended up here by accident.

A new job was not what Casey Murphy intended to find when she was searching the Internet a month ago, but in two weeks she packed up her husband and child to move to the University of Maine from Massachusetts.

Originally searching for the director of the state’s campus ministry program, Murphy, 31, said she was immediately intrigued by an online job posting for the Newman Center, in need of a new campus minister with the departure of Sister Mary Sweeney in May.

“It was a little bit serendipitous, actually,” she said. “I had wanted to come to Maine eventually. I’m happy to be here.”

Leaving her four-year position as a campus minister at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Murphy started work on Aug. 17 as the first full-time layperson to serve as a campus minister in the state. She holds a master of divinity degree – the same earned by those entering the priesthood – from the Weston Jesuit School in Cambridge, Mass.

Murphy said she plans to spend much of her time away from the Newman Center, which also houses the Our Lady of Wisdom Parish, getting to know students.

“Students rarely come to you. Usually you kind of have to come to them,” she said. “I plan to meet students for lunch or walk around the [Memorial] Union or participate in events. My job is not to be in this office, but to be out.”

A campus tour led by her husband, Michael, a 1994 alumnus of the university, will help her find her way around, Murphy said. The couple live at the St. Mary’s rectory in Orono with their 3-year-old daughter, Kyla.

As adviser for the newly formed Catholic Student Association at the university, Murphy said she also plans to involve students in weeklong trips and service projects as a way to incorporate faith with awareness of social justice issues.

While orchestrating similar projects at UMass, including a trip to Kentucky repairing homes for the needy, Murphy said she found that her career in lay ministry, a growing field, provides students with a distinctive perspective. She said she also expects community members and UM faculty and staff to benefit from her experience.

“As the religious community becomes smaller and the number of ministers becomes smaller, there’s a new need for lay ministry,” she said.