In graduate education, there is often a great divide between classroom learning and research endeavors. Using learning community (LC) values and strategies, our goal is to build stronger and more meaningful ties between these two aspects of graduate education so that students see them as complimentary learning rather than separate components. This article describes a collaborative learning project between two core topics to strengthen links between course concepts and research, raise student interest in regional environmental issues, prepare students for postgraduate success, and help foster LC values. The project requires collaborative learning and integration of individual research to achieve team products, for example, reports and presentations, conference poster, or a manuscript submission to a peer-review journal. Although the LC model is tailored toward undergraduate education, student feedback shows our transfer of its values and strategies into the graduate classroom has been successful in three student cohorts. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)