How Do You Measure Systems Change in a Multi-Year Initiative?

Project Spotlight: C-Justice

What does it really mean to measure progress when the goal is not a single program, but a shift in how systems teach, learn, and lead?

That question is at the center of our evaluation work with Bellevue College on the C-Justice initiative, a federally funded, three-year effort to integrate climate justice and civic engagement into STEM education across community colleges in the western United States.

From the start, it was clear this evaluation needed to do more than check boxes.

Three-year initiatives place unique demands on evaluation. Funders need accountability. Partners need clarity. Faculty and students need space to learn, adapt, and experiment. And the work itself evolves as conditions change. A static evaluation plan rarely holds up in that reality.

Freya + Co’s role has been to design an evaluation framework that supports both accountability and learning over time.

That includes:

• Building measures that span multiple years and phases of implementation

• Balancing federal reporting requirements with meaningful, usable insight

• Treating data as a tool for reflection and course correction, not just compliance

In the C-Justice project, evaluation is part of the infrastructure. It helps project leaders see what is emerging, understand where support is needed, and stay connected to long-term goals, even as the path shifts.

Over the coming months, I will share lessons from this work, including how we approach equity-centered metrics, faculty-partnered evaluation, and measuring systems change in complex environments.

If you are leading a long-term initiative and wondering how to measure progress without losing the heart of the work, this series is for you.