High-impact practices foster student success, but faculty faced with heavy teaching loads and lack of resources and infrastructure are challenged to implement such practices. Kinesiology faculty at California State University, East Bay collaborated to implement two student programs: Kinesiology Research Group and Get Fit! Stay Fit! The Kinesiology Research Group, a faculty-student research group, and Get Fit! Stay Fit!, a service learning experience, partnered to consolidate human and structural resources. Student-faculty mentoring circles were used to support this innovative partnership. Here, we report student perceptions of the value of these programs to their academic and professional development.