To address societal concerns related to climatic and environmental threats, scientific training must evolve from a form of traditional, disciplinary rigidity to a more transdisciplinary model - where solutions are co-developed with community members. Such a transformation will help in fostering a scientific workforce that is not only more socially-engaged, but also trained in conducting community-centered research to generate actionable, socially-relevant data poised to influence public policy and management. The Community-Soil-Air-Water (CSAW) learning ecosystem at Georgia State University encompasses a cross-collaborative partnership among academic institutions, grassroot environmental organizations, and community leaders across the city of Atlanta, GA, and seeks to address socio-environmental challenges related to soil contamination, air pollution, and the degradation of urban waterways experienced by disparately impacted communities. This presentation will feature case studies of ongoing community collaborations and place-based research surrounding issues of urban water and highlight ways in which students and faculty of the CSAW learning ecosystem are working alongside community stakeholders to raise awareness of these persistent threats to generate applicable, community-oriented data. Specifically, this presentation will emphasize community-centered research being conducted within the South River Watershed, an urban river that has been subjected to long-standing pollution events due to outdated wastewater infrastructure and municipal oversight, and whose headwaters include an EPA-designated hazardous waste site that has contaminated the river for more than three decades. By exploring these select cases of water-related research in the CSAW learning ecosystem, we aim to share how community-centered principles - such as knowledge co-production and place-based research - can be operationalized, while also contributing to the development of a scientific workforce uniquely equipped to tackle contemporary socio-environmental issues