Although frequently located in populous areas, the nation’s research universities increasingly are viewed as isolated from the communities around them. The disaffection with academia is fueled by a perception that faculty research has little relevance beyond the laboratory. The present article describes one effort at a metropolitan public university to integrate academic scholarship into the community via service-learning. Students in The Social Psychology of HIV/AIDS studied psychology theory and research in the classroom while working throughout the semester at an AIDS service organization. Their challenge was to use social psychology as a framework for understanding and developing solutions to some of the problems confronting the organization’s staff and clients. The students’ contributions, both as scholars and as volunteers, provided much-needed help to the agency. Basic research was shown to have immediate meaning for the community, which strengthened the relationship between the university and its neighbor.