KALAMAZOO, Mich. — From Kalamazoo to “television’s most exciting hour,” a Western Michigan University professor is set to make her television debut on the Price Is Right Nov. 15.

Originally traveling to San Diego for a conference in August, Luchara Wallace received an email stating the Price Is Right was filming while she was in the area, so she took a chance to win big.

“I looked at the dates where they were filming, and the dates that I would be traveling and they happened to coincide,” Wallace, director of WMU’s Lewis Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations, said. “And I said ‘hey, let’s do it’ so I signed up to go.”

Wallace had been watching the show, which premiered Sept. 4, 1972, since she was a preschooler.

Years later, standing on the set was “something you could never imagine,” according to Wallace.

“It’s something that I’m not sure you could ever prepare yourself for,” Wallace said. “And then you feel, it’s an honor to be in that space, to be in that place, to be around the people and the nostalgia and just the current experience, it was fun.”

When Price Is Right first debuted 51 years ago, Bob Barker was the original host of the daytime game show.

Flashing forward to 2023, that spot has been filled by comedian Drew Carey, the former host of Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Comparing the two, Wallace said Carey and Barker are “completely different.”

“Drew Carey is a consummate comedian, he kept us in stitches the entire time and it was just a party,” Wallace said.

Wallace’s episode of the Price Is Right airs Nov. 15 at 11 a.m.

You can watch the episode live on News Channel 3.