In our pursuit to assuage issues of science and society, we often separate between outreach to underserved communities and issues of diversity inside academia. When minority students from these communities must assimilate to succeed in the dominant academic system, this harms the student, distances them from their community, increases distrust in academia, and invalidates the goals of diversity initiatives. Systemic reform like decolonizing academia is thus necessary to allow minorities to not only access careers but affect the system itself. In order to address such complex and integrated issues, however, we need a deeply integrative paradigm; Roots-Based Integration (RBI) seeks to meet this need. RBI uses a systems-based, relational approach to find and use existing connections rather than artificially “bridge” categorized disciplines. It provides hands-on training for the design, execution, and impact of integrative work, and forms a network of resources and support far beyond academia. In Spring 2020 I created a seminar called “Integrating Art and Science” as a pilot to apply RBI, with a cohort of 11 students from 9 disciplines. The course included both practical training in professional skills and theoretical training in relational thinking, non-Western approaches to knowledge, and other RBI principles. This enabled students to create interdisciplinary projects with extensive impacts that benefited their careers and design and pursue this work in a way that consciously and holistically aids in the decolonization and diversification of academia. A key factor in facilitating this was training students from a basis of respect: respect for different disciplinary approaches within the dominant academic system, and respect for different cultural approaches to learning and knowledge that promote exchange and collaboration, rather than the “bestowal” model often used in serving minority communities.