Mercer University’s Reg Murphy Center for Collaborative Journalism welcomed Heather M. Beelaerts van Blokland as an assistant professor of practice and journalist in residence for the spring 2026 semester. She has 25 years of experience as a journalist and communicator, including a decade as an on-air broadcaster.
She is particularly interested in business journalism, due to her past working as an underwriter for a bank, in which she researched different companies.
“And I loved it. I love research. I love finding out what makes the world tick,” van Blokland said. “But as I continued to be a researcher, like hopefully everybody, I got promoted and did these other jobs in banking, and I became a manager during the financial crisis of 2008, 2009. And to be totally candid, it just really wore me out.”
She already held a bachelor’s degree in finance, marketing and multinational business from Florida State University when she decided to go back to school to pursue a master’s degree in mass communication from the University of Florida, starting a commitment to research in the public interest.
In 2018, van Blokland was working as an on-air host for KJZZ News, an NPR member station in Phoenix, when the recycling industry started to collapse. Phoenix was home to one of the largest United States waste management companies, and van Blokland learned China was no longer buying bulk trash and reusing the material. When China decided to stop importing trash from across the world, America had to stockpile its trash since it did not have the capacity to recycle. She was one of the first public radio reporters to cover the story.
This semester, van Blokland has been teaching advanced audio, data journalism and INT 101, which is her favorite class because it allows her to learn more about Mercer and see her students’ perception of a liberal arts education. The theme of her class is how politeness intersects with the fight for civil rights. In advanced audio, her class is working on oral history projects focused on the lived educational experiences of Macon residents during integration.
She said she chose to work at Mercer because it provides students a liberal arts education and allows her to both teach and be a practicing journalist. Her unique background made her stand out as a candidate.
“Heather rose to the top of the candidate pool because of her experience in public media and her background in finance and business,” said Debbie Blankenship, director of Murphy Center. “During her campus visit, her teaching demo was phenomenal and taught everyone in the room something new about sound and audio. I knew she would be an asset to both our students and the rest of the department.”
