BANGOR – The Rev. Fred Robie Jr. rang the chapel bell at Bangor Theological Seminary several times a day when he was a student at the secluded Union Street campus. The ringing bell called students to services, classes and meals.

On Wednesday, the 81-year-old Orono resident returned to his alma mater and for the last time rang the bell calling students to worship in the David Nelson Beach chapel.

Students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered at the 191-year-old seminary for a final worship service before the seminary formally moved to its new location across town in Bell Hall on the Husson College campus.

More than two dozen people, including Robie, walked the 21/2 miles across Bangor to the school’s new home.

“I think it’s a positive move for the future,” Robie, who graduated in 1951, said outside the seminary’s new offices.

Seminary classes are scheduled to begin today. Husson’s classes started Tuesday.

The Rev. William Imes, the seminary’s president, and Husson President William Beardsley signed formal agreements in July that include a multiple-year renewing lease and commitment to dedicate part of the Husson campus for future construction of the seminary’s own building. The institutions are sharing libraries, technology and a wide range of college amenities.

BTS’s board of trustees approved the move in May after more than a decade of difficult financial times, falling enrollment and a dwindling endowment.

Imes said Wednesday that despite the move, enrollment is up this fall and the number of full-time equivalent students rose from 67 to 71. Earlier this year, he said that the seminary needs to have 100 full-time equivalent students each year to stay afloat financially.

Bell Hall will serve as the seminary’s temporary home for the next few years.

Earlier this summer, most of the books from the seminary library’s more than 100,000-volume collection were moved from the Union Street campus to the Husson library. Administrative offices were moved last month.

The seminary is using three of the seven levels in Bell Hall. The basement level houses the seminary bookstore and an area that serves as a student lounge.

A chapel and four classrooms, including one with a closed-circuit television connection to the seminary’s Portland campus, are on the first level. On the fourth level are seminary offices.

The remaining levels are being used as dorm space by about 200 Husson College students.

At its Union Street campus, the seminary will continue to rent space in the former dorm to a day care center at least through May 2006. The Episcopal Diocese of Maine also will continue to use the seminary for monthly meetings.

Sixteen seminary students will continue to live in apartments on the Union Street campus during this academic year.

Timoth Sylvia, 33, is one of those students. He moved three years ago to Bangor from Davenport, Iowa, to attend the seminary.

“It’s exciting to be part of the group that gets to go through this,” he said Wednesday as he sat in the new student lounge in Bell Hall. “We’ll always carry this history with us.”

The seminary is in the process of having the buildings on the historic campus appraised, researching its title to the houses it has acquired over the past two centuries, and exploring how to market the location, Imes said Wednesday.

He added that he does not expect the board to make a decision about the future of the campus until next spring.

Husson and seminary officials still are discussing where on the 200-acre Husson campus the seminary should construct its own building in a few years.

The Rev. John Lacey, 75, of Mariaville, a 1955 seminary graduate and former trustee, said Wednesday that he has learned during his years in ministry that buildings aren’t as important as people think they are.

“I’ve served in two churches that burned to the ground,” Lacey said Wednesday during a break in an impromptu tour of Bell Hall. “One thing I’ve learned is that the building is just a house we use. People think it’s a symbol of who we are. It’s not. Bangor Theological Seminary is more than that old campus that we all loved.”

Imes said the move would allow the seminary to continue its mission – training men and women for ministry – into a third century.