Enhancing the educational process for training engineers is a recurring topic in Chemical Engineering whose momentum periodically waxes and wanes. This is due, in part, to the perceived gulf between educational and disciplinary research. While there are a number of institutions or individuals that are well known for "educational research", I am often struck by the creativity and passion for educational innovation evidenced by "regular" faculty. In this talk, I will briefly describe how I have managed to serve as PI of a 6 year NSF-funded $1.5M curriculum reform project aimed at vertical integration of ChE, while concurrently supervising 7 disciplinary projects funded from NSF, DOE, and ACS aimed primarily at mixing and segregation of granular materials. The goal of the talk is to highlight best practices for succeeding in both educational and disciplinary research in an effort to inspire some of the "regular" faculty to increase the scope of their impressive efforts.