Mrs. Doris Price-Nealy
Associate Professor of Nursing (Retired)
Founder of the Department of Nursing (50 Years of Lamar Nursing 1973-2023)
Worked at Lamar University from 1973 to 1999
Interviewed by Vidisha Barua Worley on 04/18/2023
Above Right: Ms. Doris Price-Nealy with her three daughters, Ricarda, Lydia and DeLisa; with her grandsons, Foster and Richard; with her great granddaughters Alina and Megan. Below Right: Dr. Cynthia Stinson, Class of 1975, holding her mentor’s picture as the Nursing Program completes 50 years. Picture from Cadence, Fall 2022
‘If you lay something on a solid foundation, it will do nothing but grow. When I think about where the nursing program is now, that’s what makes me feel so wonderful!’
‘I had graduated from Ohio State with a Master’s in Nursing at the time. We relocated to Beaumont in 1970. Dr. Richard Price was my husband at that time. I was the one who had the credentials to start the two-year registered nursing program at Lamar University. At that time no one else in the area had the credentials that the Board of Nurse Examiners required. I was at the right place at the right time. The challenge to me was to find other qualified faculty members to teach. Very few nurses in the area had a bachelor’s degree in nursing who were qualified to join the program. At that time there were no male faculty and no male students. What made me happy that the people that I employed were so enthusiastic and highly motivated.
‘We started off in the Chemistry building. We had one large room. I would organize everything. We worked hard but we had fun. The pleasure was that we were moving into new areas and we were responsible for developing something and responsible for implementing something that was so important.
‘One of the most difficult challenges I faced was sharing the theoretical knowledge of curriculum development that I gathered from Ohio State and keeping sure the others were on target as to what the Board of Nurse Examiners’ rules and regulations said the curriculum should be. They had given us permission to start the program. But we had to develop the curriculum. My challenge was to assist the faculty and be a role model so that they could help me implement all of that.’