Rising air temperatures, altered precipitation regimes, reduced snowfall, and more frequent extreme hydrologic events are expected to increase stream temperatures and modify flow regimes, with cascading effects on aquatic communities. Headwater streams play a key role in maintaining watershed integrity and biodiversity and can function as climate refugia. This presentation describes and undergraduate-centered, inquiry-based teaching and research framework designed to characterize physical and biological responses to environmental change in headwater streams of the Piscataquog River in southern New Hampshire and identify possible climate refugia. This project uses temperature and water-level loggers complemented by imaging approaches, to quantify thermal regimes and streamflow dynamics. Biological responses, habitat use and quality are assessed using environmental DNA and traditional sampling of brook trout and macroinvertebrates. This research is intentionally embedded within the curriculum of a small liberal arts college, where long-term data collection is sustained through student involvement. Students from biology, environmental science, and other majors engage with the project through scaffolded, inquiry-based teaching modules, course-based research experiences, and directed research. Students receive training in lab and fieldwork including experimental design, eDNA methods, data analysis and management, microscopy, and species identification, enabling them to contribute meaningfully to ongoing research questions. Additionally, this project contributes to the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN) initiative INVURTS (Investigations with NEON: Variability of Macroinvertebrates versus Urban and Rural Temperature Dynamics in Streams), allowing students to integrate local findings with regional and national datasets and to compare patterns across diverse stream systems using NEON-linked data. Student learning is supported and assessed through analysis of research products, data interpretation, and reflective synthesis connecting local watershed observations to broader ecological and climatic patterns. This framework helps students to directly apply course content and place their local watershed in a broader ecological and climatic context, while reinforcing the value of long-term monitoring. This presentation will demonstrate how undergraduate-driven research can simultaneously advance freshwater science, conservation, and education by sharing teaching and laboratory modules, implementation strategies, lessons learned, and pedagogical challenges, as well as pitfalls to avoid when embedding long-term freshwater monitoring into undergraduate curricula.