Todd,
Steve is one of the engineers I am working with from this post here: http://e2e.ti.com/support/embedded/tirtos/f/355/p/349191/1223463.aspx#1223463
We made a change in the options that seems to have fixed the problem. Options>Linker>Config uncheck the "Override default" checkbox. Rebuild all. I was then able to get the UART_echo and empty project with the heartbeat function working while debugging.
-Brayden