In 2015, the city of Springfield, Ohio, finished participating in a $2.5 million federal grant program that assisted low-income families in reducing the health risks from lead paint in their homes. But because of rule changes from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that made it harder to use funds on certain properties (including some rental homes), much of the grant money went unspent. This barrier meant that lead contamination was left unaddressed in many Springfield homes, especially within low-income or historically minoritized neighborhoods. For universities committed to supporting and strengthening their local communities, this failure to address lead poisoning generates an urgent question: How can we grapple with issues related to systemic and environmental racism more deeply through our teaching and research? In this article, the author describes how she approached this question in the fall of 2013 in a 200-level Environmental Science Research Methods class at Wittenberg University, a private university in Springfield, with a collaborative student project.