Being part of a public university, servingthe local community through civic engagement, educational access, and publicservice is an essential mission for the Department of Applied Mathematics at Universityof California (UC), Merced. The Merced Math Teachers Circle (MMTC),established in 2019, connects our departmental faculty with elementary, middleand high school teachers around the area. We meet regularly to engage in fun,creative, and meaningful problem-solving activities. The design of original and engaging problems,whose solutions are not easily searchable on the internet, has been a challenge. In this talk, I will describe how the collaboration between research andteaching faculty has transformed a research project in chemistry into amathematical game and led to the development of D2R2 (Draw-2-Remove-2). It is inspired by reversible adsorption of dimer molecules. The problem has beenutilized both as a problem-of-the-month question for UC Merced undergraduatestudents and in an MMTC activity session. The development of the game has also providedemployment and training opportunities for undergraduate students.