Shelby McNeal

Howard Fellow Shelby McNeal is a graduate student from Alcoa, Tennessee, pursuing an M.A. in Journalism with a concentration in documentary filmmaking. She graduated summa cum laude from Denison University in May 2026, where she double majored in Journalism and Music.

McNeal's interest in documentary filmmaking began in sixth grade, when she completed her first documentary for National History Day, a yearlong history project competition. She was invited three times to the national competition on the University of Maryland campus, which is what first brought her to College Park. In her freshman year of high school, McNeal and her partner placed second nationally for their documentary on Eula Hall, a healthcare activist in eastern Kentucky.

While in college, McNeal served as an Arts@Denison journalism intern for two years. Her work was published on the Denison website, as well as in the student-run newspaper, The Denisonian, and Denison’s nonprofit news organization, The Reporting Project. During the summer of 2025, she studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, and interned as a student videographer. For her senior journalism project, McNeal worked with Pulitzer Prize winner Connie Schultz to complete a three-part written series exploring the relationship between artistic passion and career choice, drawing on her own experience and that of two other graduating music students.

At the Howard Center, she hopes to broaden her reporting experience through larger-scale investigative projects while further developing her documentary filmmaking skills. In her spare time, McNeal enjoys singing with jazz ensembles and, of course, watching documentaries.