- published: 03 Dec 2014
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Coordinates: 41°17′35″N 82°13′07″W / 41.292929°N 82.218576°W / 41.292929; -82.218576
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the country. The college's motto is "Learning and Labor."
Oberlin is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium.
Both the college and the town of Oberlin were founded in 1833 by a pair of Presbyterian ministers, John Jay Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. The ministers named their project after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin, an Alsatian minister whom they both admired. Oberlin attained prominence because of the influence of its second president, the evangelist Charles Finney, after whom one of the College's chapels and performance spaces is named. Asa Mahan (1800–1889) served as Oberlin's first president from 1835–1850.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School before returning to Chicago and to work at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her future husband. Subsequently, she worked as part of the staff of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, and for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, she helped campaign for her husband's presidential bid and delivered a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She is the mother of two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and is the sister of Craig Robinson, men's basketball coach at Oregon State University. As the wife of a Senator, and later the First Lady, she has become a fashion icon and role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition and healthy eating.