In higher education, online students are often precluded from research assistantships that are more accessible for campus-based students. At a highly ranked institution for online learning, we developed the Undergraduate Research Program (URP) to address this gap in opportunities for online students. The URP is designed to engage fully distanced students in "hands-on" research experiences and in professional mentorship opportunities through collaborative research projects. In the URP, students are paid and receive course credit to participate in a number of research activities including but not limited to: research ethics training, conducting literature reviews, participating in qualitative and quantitative data analysis, producing data visualizations, and drafting research proposals and reports. In this design case, we detail the development, design, and implementation of the program, providing reflections from both program mentors and our undergraduate student research assistants.