Officially named the "Christian Educational Institution of the Mennonite Denomination", it accepted men aged 18 to 35 for a three-year program centering on biblical studies and other topics relevant to training pastors and mission workers.
The English department taught a wide variety of subjects including reading, writing, orthography, grammar, geography, arithmetic, analysis of sentences, rhetoric, logic, elementary algebra, higher algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physical geography, natural philosophy, physiology, botany, chemistry, history of the United States plus other branches usually found in academies and colleges.
The process of promoting, raising funds and building the school was one of the uniting points of the fledgling General Conference Mennonite Church.
Conflicts between van der Smissen and other key staff members developed, but the school's end was largely a result of low attendance, financial difficulty and debt.
The supporting churches had two other concerns dividing their resources: new mission projects and eighteen thousand Russian Mennonite immigrants who were arriving in North America.