The preparation students receive in typical college laboratory courses is often disconnected from the practice of science in academia and industry. To students, laboratory activities often have no clear relevance to social issues, each investigates a different topic, generates small amounts of data that address a limited set of questions, and allows only superficial quantitative treatment. We will present preliminary results from an NSF-funded Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement project meant to better prepare science students for the real-world problems they will encounter; problems that require strong quantitative skills and a thorough, realistic understanding of scientific inquiry. Our project involves classes in four disciplines (geography, biology, chemistry, and geology) studying an on-campus stormwater remediation wetland.  We expected that studying a real-world problem to which students contribute (stormwater drains from student parking lots) would engage and motivate students resulting in greater student achievement and interest across disciplines. Moreover, confronting the quantitative complexity of a large, heterogeneous, and long-term dataset would allow students to gain real analytical skills and impress upon them the need for those skills. Thus far, student learning and attitudes have been assessed in five courses; in all cases there was an increase in student knowledge of content (3 courses significantly so). Students generally have shown satisfaction with the wetland as a laboratory focus (48-86% satisfaction) and may have an increased appreciation for the importance of interdisciplinary preparation. For example, students viewed participation in an interdisciplinary symposium very positively and viewed the lack of more such opportunities as a weakness of their education. Ideas for how our approach can be used in courses that are not part of a multidisciplinary project or without an on-campus field site will be presented.