Concordia University, Nebraska, is a private, coeducational university located in Seward, Nebraska. It is affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and part of its ten-member Concordia University System. Concordia offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 50 academic programs in both on-campus and online formats. Founded in 1894 as the Evangelische Lutherische Schulleherer Seminar, the university began as a preparatory teacher’s school with its twelve students boarded, fed and taught in the same building by J. George Weller and his wife. The surrounding community was supportive of a school in their midst, and did much to help the students with extra foodstuffs, funding, and housing. The school granted its first teaching degrees in 1907. During World War I, the school faced anti-German sentiment, but worked alongside the community to support the America by constructing a 100 ft (30 m) flagpole. Following the war, the school was accredited as a junior college, and women joined the student body in 1919.