Santa Maria’s Loss Or SLO’s Gain? A.T. Still University Prepares To Relocate
SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) - A.T. Still University is preparing to relocate from Santa Maria to San Luis Obispo.
College officials say moving to the new building is allowing them to expand.
Back in 2019, the city of Santa Maria announced the arrival of the nationally recognized A.T. Still University, or ATSU, to Coast Hills Credit Union’s flagship building on Betteravia.
ATSU teaches osteopathic medicine and trains students to join the workforce as primary care doctors, and the Central Coast's College for Healthy Communities trains physician assistants for underserved communities.
“We accepted our first group of students in September of 2021,” says A.T. Still University dean Eric Sauers. “So we are about to graduate our third cohort of physician assistants students actually this Friday.”
The college is preparing to relocate to a location on Tank Farm Road in San Luis Obispo, and they expect their move will be complete in time to begin the next training cycle in September of 2026.
“During our time here, what we really realized was there is a need for more higher education opportunities for people on the Central Coast and there's certainly a resounding need to grow the health care workforce,” says Sauers.
School officials have expressed tremendous gratitude for Santa Maria’s city leaders, who they say have gone above and beyond their call of duty in setting the campus up years ago, and continuing to accommodate them along the way.
“It doesn't impact any of our training partners,” says Sauers. “So we will continue to train our students at Marion Regional Medical Center, Lompoc Valley Medical Center, Community Health Centers in the Central Coast, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department. And hopefully it will create more opportunities for us to partner, say, with Adventist, French Hospital and others.”
Sauers says the SLO building is larger than their current home in Santa Maria, and was designed with the intent to house schools of higher education.
This will enable further growth which will still include students and recruits from the whole region, and Sauers says this can be seen as an expansion in service to the overall Central Coast, rather than leaving one community for another.
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