We often compartmentalize our academic life into the areas of teaching, research, and practice. In fact, there are many synergies to be realized by treating a course as a complete ecosystem. This means enlisting students in the course to work on projects to improve the course, and projects to help the instructor in research. Managing these projects can even give instructors a taste of what it is like to manage projects in industry, giving them experience applying course concepts in the field. Projects within the course can lead to independent-study projects, or even theses. With a little bit of ingenuity, this strategy can be employed in courses from the introductory to the graduate level.