In his work, "Two Centuries of Student Christian Movements", Clarence Shedd traced the existence of student Christian societies back to the early years of the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, he found, a foreign missions emphasis was prevalent in the student societies and fully three-quarters of them were called Societies of Missionary Inquiry. In 1877, a student department of YMCA was formed to direct efforts more specifically toward Christian work on college and university campuses. Luther D. Wishard, the first collegiate secretary of the YMCA, had a great personal interest in foreign missions, and his influence did much to orient the student YMCA in that direction. On the theological seminary scene, efforts were underway by 1879 to form "some permanent system of inter-seminary correspondence on the subject of missions." To this end, the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance was established in 1880 and had annual conventions until 1898 when its work was merged with that of the Student Volunteer Movement and intercollegiate YMCA.