Collaborations between business and academia provide valuable opportunities for students to connect classroom learning with practical work experience. To effectively reach a significant number of students, one approach is to meld a real-world business project and classroom assignment into a realistic business scenario that can be addressed by students within an academic course. This paper describes the process, challenges, and results encountered in a collaborative effort between a major health insurance provider and a local university to implement components of a business project as the final assignments in courses for introductory and advanced database systems. The approach generated significant enthusiasm among the student participants and promoted an improved awareness of current technological skills needed by business organizations.