At the turn of the century, the fraternal organizations also began to give the question of schools due consideration. Almost all appointed committees on education and they too decided that the primary need was the foundation of special colleges where instruction could be given in the language of the homeland. Thus, in 1902 there was formed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, an institution, _Matice Vyssoho Vzdelani_, a center of higher studies, by Bohumil Simek and G. F. Severa to work for the establishment of a Czech college, but it also met with no success. In 1903, the Polish National Alliance also created a committee on education and schools, which worked for ten years and then in 1912, at Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, opened the Polish National Alliance College which was incorporated in 1914. Although it was rather on the level of a high school, it profited by the opportunity to establish a branch of the Student Army Training Corps during World War I. Its first rector was Professor Romuald Piatkowski. In 1915, the work of the high school or academy was augmented by the foundation of a Technical Institute. It was in this status that the institution passed into the next general period.[30] Other forces were at work, however, to preserve the native languages by introducing the Slavic languages into the already established American institutions. While the motives were varied the efforts were made first by the less clerical and the more Protestant parts of the population. Thus, in 1887, the Congregational Church in Ohio persuaded the authorities of Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio[31] to introduce a course in Czech for candidates to the Congregational ministry who would minister to the Czech communities. Professor Louis F. Miskovsky was appointed instructor, and his became the first chair of Slavic studies in an American institution. Oberlin’s program differed from the later attempts at Harvard and elsewhere in that it was frankly intended only to teach the language. Any Slavic cultural work in a broader sense was insignificant. It is small wonder then that on Professor Miskovsky’s death in the 1920’s, the chair was quickly abandoned and the money used for a course of lectures on Central European affairs given by Professor Oskar Jaszy, a liberal Hungarian who opposed both Communism and the regime of Admiral Horthy. In somewhat the same way, and for the same purpose, instruction in the Polish language was introduced into Notre Dame University in 1909. Efforts to include a Slavic language, usually Czech, in the curricula of state and private colleges were particularly intense in Nebraska and Iowa.[32] In these states, the Czech population had been among the earliest settlers; many had prospered and secured appointive and elective posts in the state governments, which gave them the opportunity to work for the introduction of their native language into various institutions.