Projects are an essential component of the curriculum I design, and they aim to allow students to apply what they learn in class to real-world problems of their choice, teach them crucial teamwork skills, and challenge them to develop their critical-thinking skills. For example, a significant part of the Database Systems course I teach here at Illinois is the semester-long project where students build a database-centered web application. In this project, students have the autonomy to choose the application domain, the web development platform, the data model, and data sources. Such independence ignites students' interest and intellectual curiosity, evident by the quality and innovation of the numerous projects that exceeded the project requirements and expectations.