The Georgia College mathematics department has reimagined its major requirements to integrate meaningful undergraduate research experiences. We have developed and implemented a multi-year action plan to transform our major. In this article we discuss how the department has developed and implemented a year-long research experience as a capstone requirement. We address how we gained faculty and student buy-in, built a curriculum to support the experience, and developed assessment and evaluation tools. We conclude with a discussion of challenges and next steps in the program.