This academic year we launched a new undergraduate biology curriculum with new compulsory courses designed to better support student learning, to improve skill-building and to pro-actively build a sense of community. As course organiser and lead developer of one of the new first semester, first year courses I was delighted to be able to bring a large number of well-researched resources and evidence from research studies, mostly involving our own undergraduate students, to this project. These research studies can all be described as arising from the scholarship of learning and teaching (SoTL). Speaking as a biologist and therefore a non-specialist in education, I will explain what SoTL means to me and invite you to reflect on what it might mean for you. I will tell you about my SoTL journey over the last 20 years which I will illustrate with a series of short teaching-related research stories. These adventures have featured more than 20 undergraduate collaborators two of whom, Sophie and Jessica, will join me to tell their own stories. Together we will share what we have learned from our experiences, and will champion the value of staff- student collaboration in teaching-related research.