I had the privilege of acting as a research assistant for the Pacific Undergraduate Research Experience in Mathematics (PURE Math) hosted at the University of Hawai'i Hilo, under the direction of John Little in 2012 and Scott Chapman in 2013. These 8 week summer programs gave promising undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to experience mathematics research as they worked on open problems in algebra and number theory. I also served as a research assistant for the San Diego State University Mathematics REU in the summer of 2014, under the direction of Vadim Ponomarenko, and returned in the summer of 2017 in the role of codirector. Since 2019, I have been Co-PI on the SDSU REU grant, and directed projects most years the grant is active. My experiences in these REUs resulted in the frequent inclusion of undergraduate projects into my own research.