Evaluation and Monitoring of Research Impacts Webinar Series

The Hudson River Foundation is thrilled to expand its social science research program through in-person and virtual opportunities for knowledge exchange and networking. Our goal is to engage students, social scientists, and decision makers interested in research on human engagement with the Hudson River watershed.

Following our first workshop, Collaborative Research for Impact: The Why and How of Research for Impact, we are launching a virtual webinar series focused on building practical skills for social science research.

We are kicking off our webinars with a two-part series titled Evaluation and Monitoring of Research Impacts.

The webinars will focus on collaborative research that enables societal impact, approaches to ensure findings can drive meaningful and sustained change over time, and other emerging topics. Each webinar will be 1 hour long and will involve a presentation by evaluation professionals followed by a Q&A with attendees. Attendees will leave with resources to support their efforts in evaluation and monitoring of research impacts.

Webinar Details

Webinar #1: From Paper to Practice: Tracking How Social Science Research Drives Sustainable Change

June 24, 2026 (1 – 2 pm ET)

The first webinar will introduce evaluation as an area of study, explain the value of incorporating evaluation methods into research projects, and share examples of research projects that have utilized evaluation and monitoring techniques to assess impact. Examples will cover evaluation designs and framework used.

Our guest speaker is Rachel Becker-Klein, Ph.D, founder of Two Roads Consulting. Dr. Becker-Klein brings more than 20 years of experience as an evaluator and researcher, working primarily with nonprofit organizations whose missions work to make life better for their communities. She strongly believes in building the evaluation capacity of these organizations and helping them grow by learning from their experiences and continuously improving their programming and activities. She has experience co-developing tools with organizations to assess and monitor the success of their programs. Two Roads Consulting uses a participatory and utilization-focused approachwhere the top criterion of success is the extent to which processes and products are used by program staff to make decisions and take action.

• Click here to watch a recording of Dr. Becker-Klein’s presentation and discussion.

Webinar #2: Evaluation and Monitoring of Research Impacts Pt. II

September 2026 (exact date and time TBD)

The second webinar will feature evaluators sharing examples of evaluation and monitoring work conducted with research teams. The presentation will describe the roles of evaluators, researchers, and their partners; the design of long-term monitoring plans; the resources used; and how impacts were conceptualized, operationalized, and tracked in the timeframes set.

Who is it for?

• Are you a social scientist (including students), decisionmaker, or practitioner at nonprofits, government agencies, or other organizations?
• Are you interested or involved in social science research that can advance social-ecological goals in specific decision-making contexts?
• Are you curious about the longer-term impacts from social science research studies?
• Are you interested in approaches to track how research projects can have longer-term societal impacts?

If you said yes to all of the above, these webinars are for you!