Liberty breaks ground

Another historic groundbreaking took place atop the Liberty mountainside Friday, Nov. 9. to symbolize the beginning of construction for the new School of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences. Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr., university officials and administration, Liberty’s Board of Trustees and representatives from the Tobacco Commission came together to dedicate the upcoming addition to the Lord and to thank those involved for making the next steps possible.

This new, multi-level facility will be built on a 100,000-square-foot lot up the road from the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre and will overlook the Liberty campus, the City of Lynchburg and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Set to open in the fall 2014 semester, the School of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences will house several health and medicinal programs, including graduate degrees, physician’s assistant programs, nurse practitioners programs, master’s in public health and others, according to Falwell.

Students wishing to study physical therapy are encouraged to take classes at Lynchburg College.

“It would cause problems locally if we started a program like that here,” Falwell said. “As a courtesy to Lynchburg College (LC), we don’t want to compete with them for the limited number of clinical opportunities available in the area, so we hope many Liberty graduates will continue to enroll in LC’s doctor of physical therapy program.”

According to Falwell, students enrolled in the program will spend two years in intensive classroom instruction and a year or two in a residence program in the local hospitals.

Liberty has been recruiting faculty that will eventually teach in the new school. Ronnie Martin, who has the prior experience of founding an osteopathic school of medicine in Oklahoma and serving in a leadership role that accredits schools of osteopathic medicine, will serve as the school’s dean, according to Falwell.

“I think this fulfills some of the vision that Dr. Falwell and others had,” Martin said. “They envisioned, as the chancellor said today, that this would be a full-service university and represent to Christians what other universities represent to other religions such as Notre Dame and Brigham-Young University. In order to do that, you have to offer graduate-level programs.”

According to Martin, Liberty will be more than a religious school and more than a Bible-centered university. Liberty will become a full-service university and remain faithful to what it believes in.

During the groundbreaking ceremony, Falwell mentioned how the idea of a medical school has been an intended topic for a long time — 41 years, to be exact.

“This isn’t something that we just decided to do in the last year or two,” Falwell said. “It was always a call of Liberty to train doctors, lawyers, engineers, and this is one of the last pieces of the puzzle. We knew the time had come to do this because there were so many signs that were providential — the right people were sent here, the tobacco commission came and the check for $20.5 million from the Tobacco Commission will really help us in getting this started.”

After the ground was broken, Falwell reminisced of the days when he was a student at Liberty and how much change has happened since then.

“I was here through all the tough years,” Falwell said. “When I was a student, there was no Vines Center, football stadium or DeMoss building. The only buildings that were here then are what we’re tearing down now. What’s happening now is what everyone dreamed of happening back then, and I feel very privileged to be a part of it.”

The new school is scheduled to open in two years, and is expected to bring in 400 new jobs.