Zachary R. Dowdy

Zachary Dowdy has been an instructor in Stony Brook’s journalism program since January 2003. A Stony Brook graduate, he has worked for The Boston Herald, where he covered breaking news and compiled a column focusing on teen issues, and The Boston Globe, where he covered urban affairs, international issues and criminal justice with an emphasis on corrections.

More recently, Dowdy was a rewrite and criminal justice reporter and United Nations correspondent for Newsday, where he penned a news column about criminal justice and legal issues.

Dowdy has taught journalism and writing courses at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and Roxbury Community College in Boston, and at Hofstra University on Long Island. He also participated as a writing coach in Partners in Print, a journalism program for elementary, middle and high school students in Boston.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Stony Brook, and master’s degrees in English and journalism from Harvard and Columbia universities, respectively.

Chrissy Sampson

Chrissy Sampson is in her second year as co-coordinator of the Greene Institute alongside Zachary Dowdy. She was a student of Bob Greene at Hofstra University, graduating in 2002. Her favorite day in “Investigative Reporting” class involved Professor Greene bringing in bags of garbage he’d collected from people’s curbs and assigning students to comb through the trash to look for stories about the people who threw it all away. And 21 years later, Sampson found herself collecting trash from a beach in Montauk and digging through it for a story in The East Hampton Star.

Formerly with Newsday, Patch.com, The Virginia Gazette, The Sag Harbor Express, and The East Hampton Star, she currently serves as director of community engagement and lead producer of the weekly program “East End News” at LTV Studios, a nonprofit TV station in Wainscott. She has won awards from the New York Press Association and Press Club of Long Island for her coverage of education, environmental issues, and food, and for The Star’s digital marketing campaigns. In 2023, she was named PCLI’s Narrative Reporter of the Year. She has been working with the Greene Team since 2010, giving back to honor the legacy of the remarkable journalist who inspired her.