Its mission was "to maintain a culture in the wilderness, to provide an educated leadership for the developing communities, and to teach liberal arts within the context of the Christian faith."
The college presidents were referred to as Inspectors, and they performed much of the actual teaching, recordkeeping, and student oversight.
Under the second "Inspector", at least one scientific class (Laboratory Science) was added to the liberal-arts curriculum, but all teaching continued in the German language.
Johann Peter Goebel became the school's chief in 1880 when the second Inspector (Philip Frederick Meusch) died suddenly.
He added another year to the school's curriculum, because of a general observation that incoming students seemed relatively unprepared for the rigorous college-level study.