What is currently an empty dirt lot will soon be a place where some of the community’s future doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals get their start in the medical field. 

The Santa Barbara Unified School District celebrated the groundbreaking of the Doris B. Mithun Mini-Campus at San Marcos High School on Monday. The campus will be the new home for the Cottage Health Careers Academy, where students prepare for a healthcare career. 

The project also includes the renovation of the Elings Wells Family Wellness Center.

“The new classrooms that will be built here, along with some close to real-world labs, will give students space to practice, ask questions, and build their confidence,” Superintendent Hilda Maldonado said.

“The improvements to the wellness center will help us care for them as they learn and grow.”

The $11 million Doris B. Mithun Mini-Campus will replace the four aging portable classrooms currently used by the Cottage Health Careers Academy with science laboratories, a demonstration classroom with patient-bed learning stations, a permanent restroom facility and outdoor learning areas.

While student Max Campbell will have graduated by the time the facility is complete, he said he is excited for the opportunities future students will have.

“I think it’ll be great,” Campbell said. “This will be way more hands-on, way more medical equipment and actual classrooms that they can be in.”

Campbell is currently in the Certified Nursing Assistant internship program through Santa Barbara City College and plans to continue to explore nursing after graduation.

“It gives us a lot of really great experiences and opens the world to healthcare and the medical field,” Campbell said. “Which is really nice and a great start for people, especially coming into high school and seeing if they want to pursue that path.”

The project is funded in part by the district’s Measure I funds and the Royal Pride Foundation, which has partnered with the district on the project through a 2023 funding agreement.

While the Cottage Health Careers Academy has been around for 20 years, San Marcos Principal Dare Holdren said it has expanded to include ninth-graders, a new curriculum preparing students for more than 200 careers.

Within the next year or so, he said, every student will have an internship in the community, many of which will be through Cottage Health.

“Together, these spaces reflect a simple belief: Students deserve both the opportunity to pursue a meaningful future and the support to get there, so that they can live and work in the community in which they were raised,” Holdren said.

With so many San Marcos High School alumni already working at Cottage Health, Scott Wester, CEO of Cottage Health, said the new facility will help inspire the next generation of healthcare workers.

“This is a moment of promise,” Wester said. “And today that promise is about opening doors for our next generation and helping the young people discover meaningful healthcare careers where they can make a difference in the lives of others.”

McGillivray Construction Inc. is the project’s construction contractor, and Kruger Bensen Ziemer Architects Inc. designed the project.

It is expected to be completed by December 2027.