By Rolanda Gallop
Finch Walker ’19 is an award-winning reporter who covers education on the Space Coast at Florida Today. Throughout the course of their career, Walker has covered a broad range of topics, including school board meetings and board elections, trends in student discipline data, how students with disabilities and their families navigate education, teacher pay, investigations into teacher oustings, Florida’s evolving laws surrounding LGBTQ+ students and teachers, student achievement and graduation rates and more. Walker previously covered breaking news in Brevard County and had a brief stint as the charity reporter at The Villages Daily Sun. Over the years, they have received multiple accolades for their work from the Florida Society of News Editors.
*Note: Since publication, Walker has accepted a new position with USA Today and is relocating to Pennsylvania.
Residence: Palm Bay, Florida
Florida Tech Degree: Multiplatform Journalism, B.S.
Job Title: Education Reporter, Florida Today
Why did you choose Florida Tech?
I was dual enrolled at Eastern Florida State College in high school and received Florida Tech’s Presidential Scholarship, which covered the full cost of my tuition. I initially applied for the scholarship because I really enjoyed the psychology courses I’d taken at EFSC, and one of my professors encouraged me to pursue a degree in the field at Florida Tech. While that’s the initial track I started on, I ended up switching to the journalism program after my first semester.
How did your experience at Florida Tech prepare you as a professional?
At Florida Tech, I got to develop my journalism skills at The Crimson as a reporter, copy editor and, eventually, the paper’s editor-in-chief. Not only did I get to practice reporting on a deadline, but I also got to mentor young journalists and help encourage a love of writing in them.
Did any specific courses or faculty significantly influence your education?
I had some wonderful professors—specifically, former instructor Amy Laakman and professor emeritus John Lavelle—but Ted Petersen stands out as having had the biggest impact on me as a student and as a journalist.
His enthusiasm for journalism is what really helped my own passion for reporting to develop. My friends and I used to joke that he’d always find a reason to knock a point off of an assignment if it meant not giving you 100%, but deep down, that’s part of what I appreciated about him: His feedback was honest but never unnecessarily harsh; he always found ways to point out how a lede could be snappier, how a sentence could be more concise or how an article could be structured differently to better serve the reader. His input helped me develop my own skills and my confidence in myself as a writer, and without him, I don’t think I would have thrown myself into journalism the way that I have.
Share your best Florida Tech student memory.
During my time as editor-in-chief at The Crimson, two other reporters and I worked over the course of a semester to investigate cases of sexual assault and rape that had not been counted in the school’s annual crime reports. It was incredible to see our months of difficult, emotionally heavy work pay off—and to hear people around campus respond to our reporting and the survivors’ stories. There was even a small student protest after the article came out, and ultimately, the article led to more transparency in campus crime data reporting.
What have been the highlights and milestones of your life and career so far?
The highlights were probably when I adopted my two cats and my dog, Salem. But on a more professional note, I’m really proud of my coverage over the past year—a story I broke about a Brevard teacher being ousted from the district because she used a student’s chosen name without parental permission made international news in April, and things didn’t slow down for months.
What followed were rallies and a walkout supporting her, school board meetings filled with people shouting for her reinstatement, a state committee giving her the okay to return to teaching and, eventually, a very lengthy one-on-one interview with her at her family’s home. It’s been exhausting to cover—and it’s still ongoing—but watching my writing gain traction around the world has been an experience I don’t think I could have imagined before now.
What advice do you have for current COPLA students who want to make the most out of their time at Florida Tech?
If you’re planning to go into a career focused on media or writing, spend your time at Florida Tech practicing skills in all types of media. I knew as a student that I wanted to be a print journalist, but the fact that I took photo, audio and video editing classes continues to be immensely helpful to me now in an industry where journalists are constantly being asked to produce new types of content. Also, join your student newspaper.
This piece also appeared in the spring 2026 issue of COPLA Connections.
