Union College is a four-year coeducational college in Lincoln, Nebraska, offering programs leading to baccalaureate and associate degrees in arts and sciences, professional fields and a Master of Physician Assistant Studies. Founded in 1891, the college is owned and operated by the Mid-America Union Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. By 1889, several Seventh-day Adventist conferences (local-level organizational structures) had begun setting up small higher-educational institutions modeled after Battle Creek College in Battle Creek, Michigan, which later became Andrews University. In the western Midwest and Great Plains, Adventists in Kansas and Minnesota were trying to independently support schools. W. W. Prescott, then educational secretary for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and later Union's first president, presented a plan of uniting conferences to support centralized schools rather than supporting schools individually. This system led to the introduction of the Union Conference administrative level of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and gave the college its name, Union.