 To ensure the seminary's long-term survival, in 1896 Frances Shimer reached an agreement with the University of Chicago in which the school became the Frances Shimer Academy of the University of Chicago and was loosely affiliated with the Baptist Church. She retired to Florida, never returning to the school, and died in 1901. University of Chicago president William Rainey Harper was the first to champion junior colleges in the United States, and in 1907 Shimer became one of the first schools to offer a junior-college program. The two-year junior-college program, operating with the original preparatory program, was accredited in 1920.
