Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) can offer various benefits to students in preparing them for graduate school and professional practice. However, the impact of UREs is often limited to a few students due to the challenges in scaling them up. Owing to the underlying apprenticeship model of many UREs, designing an effective URE requires a significant investment of time and effort by the faculty. In contrast, course-based undergraduate research can provide many of the benefits through a resource-efficient and scalable format. Here, we present a review of one such experience of teaching course-based undergraduate research through a vertically integrated projects (VIP) class at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This course is titled “VIP: 3D Printing on the Nanoscale”, and it specifically aims to teach nano-scale additive manufacturing to undergraduate students through a series of design-build-test projects in a research environment. Here, we present the project goals, learning outcomes, our observations of course effectiveness, and the challenges observed during these classes over a period of five semesters. We summarize our learnings in terms of what worked and did not work well. We demonstrate that the VIP class format can be an effective and scalable format for teaching undergraduate researchers, but challenges exist in implementing the class to maximize the benefit to the students.