The main purpose of this paper was to follow the development of research units in Israeli colleges of education: To learn about the challenges they faced, their contribution to individual teacher educators as well as to teacher education colleges' research capacity. The study is autoethnographic. Thirteen veteran research unit members authored 46 stories narrating significant experiences they had. Six themes were identified in the stories: Nurturing individual research capacity, developing the college's research culture, human and power relations, ethics, resources and units' development over time. The themes are aligned with three preconditions for research capacity building: expertise, motivation and opportunities, and involve both the individual (micro-level) and institutional (meso-level) contexts. The autoethnographic genre enabled us to link individuals' actions and teacher education colleges. The study shows that although research units were effective in enhancing research capacity, their actions also had unintended consequences, and suggests ways to counteract them.