This is a personal tale of how I have directed undergraduate research at MTU and ETSU via NSF-REU awards. I was the sole advisor from 1991 to 2018, and have worked with Fernando Piñero and Pamela Harris since then. I retired in 2024. Some aspects of my talk are

*How I used undergraduate research as a springboard to solidify and define my own research;

*How I learned so much from my students while teaching them sophisticated and bread-and-butter techniques; and

*The illustrious careers of my students.