Faculty at Columbia University's Earth Semester created the interdisciplinary Riparian Area Management Project to help students integrate information and skills from life sciences, geosciences, social sciences, and humanities focused coursework. Structured as a "consulting" contract, students were required to make a policy recommendation utilizing diverse data and struggling with the complexity inherent in a real situation with no single "right" answer. While Earth Semester was a unique program, the Riparian Project is adaptable to any educational system. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 1 footnote.)