Our collaborative project and resulting pedagogy emphasize student-centered learning and critical reading and introduce a disruptive challenge for students to question assumptions, challenge binary thinking, and tolerate ambiguity. Using class readings, library research, and innovative assignments and course design, this project, along with others it has inspired across campus, helps students focus on the reading and critical thinking aspects of research, which are often assumed rather than explicit in a research assignment. With the goal of affecting habits of mind, we measure success in incremental shifts in thinking. Our project aims to get college students to consider research as a conversation rather than a checklist of steps. Recognizing that students need guidance and practice with critical reading, Stephanie Otis, then instruction coordinator at Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, and Dr. Joyce Dalsheim, professor of global studies, developed this pedagogy and programmatic strategy for library instruction called Reading is Research.