Inclusive. Innovative. Progressive. It's the best way to describe Otterbein's history, present and future. At Otterbein, an individual's worth has never been measured by gender, by color or by title. This University has only ever asked: Are you ready to learn and to make your community a better place? If the answer is yes, you already know the most important truth about Otterbein. And the story only gets better. Read on.

Otterbein?s story begins in the mid-1800s, before the abolition of slavery,?before the women?s rights movement, before equality and inclusion were?rights. Otterbein was founded by the Church of the United Brethren in?Christ in 1847.?Those qualities built Otterbein to what it is today: a nationally recognized?university offering bachelor and master degrees to a wide variety of?students.

We included women as faculty members and as students from our?founding, and we were the first institution in the nation to do so. Otterbein?admitted students of color before the Civil War and welcomed Japanese-American students who had been sent to internment camps during World War II. And, we gave students a voice in our story through our unique?governance system beginning in the 1960s.?