Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Liberty University student Connor Thomas (left) gets a workout on the climbing wall in the LaHaye Student Union. Liberty University is offering cutting-edge extracurricular activities to attract students.

Nathan Carroll (left) and Travis Mimms lift weights in the LaHaye Student Union at Liberty University.

Students Tim Wamsley and Trey Falwell (right) ride on the university's dirt bike track.

Bryan Evans (left) and Lee Beaumont study maps while talking about planned projects for Ultimate LU. Analysts say colleges will have to compete to attract high school graduates, predicted to number 2.9 million in 2009.

Brian Thomas, who helped design, Snowflex, stands on top of Liberty Mountain, where Liberty University will build a year-round facility for skiing and snowboarding using a slick polymer in place of snow.

Hyojin Lee (left) and Wijae Shin, Liberty University students from South Korea, use wireless Internet in a new coffeehouse lounge at the school's Tilley Student Center. Recreation spending is increasing at the university, but officials say it is still a small portion of the budget.

LYNCHBURG -- The college campus that the late Rev. Jerry Falwell founded is not known as a particularly fun-filled place. Falwell himself occasionally referred to Liberty University as a "Bible Boot Camp." But the school's new image includes ski boots -- and a $2 million synthetic slope.

Saying goodbye to some of its straight-laced stereotype, Liberty's fresh face also includes a track for off-road motorcycles, a paintball battlefield, an equestrian center with horse trails and organized student shopping trips to Richmond.

"Our mission was never to be a Bible school just training teachers," said Jerry Falwell Jr., a son of the founder who is Liberty's chancellor and president. He is leading a multimillion-dollar campaign called "Ultimate LU" to enhance the university's appeal to a broader range of prospective students.

The new slope for skiing and snowboarding, scheduled to open in February, is Ultimate LU's centerpiece. "It's the kind of thing that catches your eye. We're hoping this saves us some money on recruiting."

At first glance, Liberty University's recruiting doesn't seem to need a boost. In July the Christian liberal arts school closed its fall enrollment early for the first time since opening in 1971. The school accepted 3,500 new students, raising its enrollment to about 11,300 -- an increase of nearly 8 percent from 2007.

But the future of college admissions around the nation depends on demographics that suggest increased competition for new students is coming. Projections are that the annual number of U.S. high school graduates will peak in 2009 at about 2.9 million, after a 15-year climb.

As a result, many colleges expect to see fewer applications in subsequent years, and they will have to compete more vigorously for the best students.

"The colleges that are going to be particularly troubled in the next few years are small, private liberal arts schools in rural areas. That's Liberty," said Scott Carlson, a senior writer who focuses on campus building and infrastructure trends at the Washington, D.C.-based Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the midst of the nation's current economic uncertainties, Liberty's spending on high-profile student amenities contrasts with some small schools that are more financially conservative.

For example, at Bob Jones University, a nondenominational Christian school of 4,100 students in Greenville, S.C., the infrastructure priority is improved campus housing, said Brian Scoles, a Bob Jones spokesman. The most discretionary venture under way at Bob Jones is a new water fountain at the front entrance.

Strict code will remain

But Liberty's emphasis on spare-time diversions won't change its strict code of conduct, which includes possible reprimands and fines for such activities as attending dances, entering the bedroom of a member of the opposite sex and viewing R-rated movies.

"We're known as a conservative religious school," Falwell acknowledged. The school's expansion of leisure options "can be done without compromising our Christian beliefs."

"We don't have coed dorms," he added. "We don't have beer bashes."

Liberty officials vow vigilance in enforcing limits that keep Ultimate LU from venturing into the unacceptable. The school's entertainment parameters were tested a few weeks ago when a promoter wanted to hold a professional mixed martial arts competition on campus.

"Ultimate Fighting wanted to come here and do an event. I said no," said Lee Beaumont, the Liberty official in charge of spearheading the new campus recreation programs. "We're not going to have people beating each other's brains out."

Another recent proposal from outside: an on-campus poker tournament -- was also rejected. "It wasn't going to be for money, just chips," Beaumont said. "But it was still the concept of gambling."

Outsiders did not suggest such nontraditional events for Liberty until recently, and the ideas might underscore a misperception of how much the school's personality is changing, said Chris Misiano, director of campus programming. "We're open" to new concepts, he said. "We're not wide open."

'Champions for Christ'

After all, he reasoned, Liberty officials still filter out HBO at the nearby Ramada Inn that the school leases and manages. Occasionally, Misiano hears someone voice a yearning for campus theaters to show R-rated movies.

"Some guy in the hall might say in passing that he wished we could see 'Braveheart.' But they're not pushing the envelope. They know where they're attending and what we stand for."

Mark Krom, a senior from Massachusetts majoring in health promotion, endorsed the ski slope and other new pursuits. "I think it's exciting. It's a great form of marketing, and the university is still producing champions for Christ."

Not all the students seem so enthusiastic. Sara Blackmon, a senior from South Carolina who is a nursing major, expressed concern about Liberty's priorities. "If money that could go to outreach missions goes into things like a ski mountain, that would bother me."

But school officials maintain that no money is being diverted from worthy efforts in academics, worship facilities or humanitarian causes. Falwell noted that the $2 million to pay for the new ski slope came from a single anonymous contributor specifically for that purpose. Recreation spending, while on the increase, still represents a small part of the university's $300 million annual budget, school officials said. They declined to be more specific.

Artificial ski slope

Liberty University aims to get a big bang for the bucks invested in its new Snowflex Center, a 1-acre, year-round ski and snowboarding run. It is located adjacent to the campus atop the school's Liberty Mountain.

The snowless, 500-foot-long slope has a polymer skin kept slick with small misting devices. Thanks to its foam underbelly, "You could fall on it all day without being bruised," said Brian Thomas, a former ski instructor who helped design and engineer the concept.

His company, Briton Engineering Developments Ltd., of Manchester, England, has sold several snowless ski areas in the likes of Beirut and Hong Kong. Sales in the United States have been limited to small practice runs in Park City, Utah, and Lake Placid, N.Y. University officials, including Jerry Falwell Jr., test-skied a prototype in Scotland before signing a contract, the company said.

The Snowflex Center will have ski jumps and a half-pipe -- an area that resembles the curved sides of a swimming pool bottom to make for a downhill challenge.

It will be open to the public, although no admission fee has been established, and the operation will accommodate roughly 100 skiers at a time.

While that number is far smaller than the hundreds and even thousands who can fit on most natural ski mountains, the short distance of the Snowflex Center's run and the speed with which lifts will return skiers to the top means they can take a dozen or more turns an hour -- far more than on most conventional slopes.

The announcement of the ski slope earlier this year brought national news coverage, a good start toward the image altering Liberty officials hope for.

Thomas is excited that the publicity garnered by the school might gain him more customers. He is already talking with California developers who deal in a market he considers potentially lucrative: theme parks.