Despite extensive evidence supporting the benefits of undergraduate research, the economics profession has been slow to incorporate such experiences into the curriculum. Where such experiences have been developed, they are often targeted toward high-achieving students. In this article, the author reports on a transformative capstone experience that effectively involved average undergraduate students in meaningful economic research by utilizing community interaction to motivate deep engagement. The author argues that by making community interaction and concrete economic analysis central elements of the capstone course, the benefits of undergraduate research can be extended to all students (not just the elite) and that doing so is critical to our students' mastery of higher-order proficiencies.