Jean McGlothlin Doerge graduated from Northwestern in 1958 with a B.S. in Education and joined the staff at Minden High School. The next year, she and her husband moved to Arp, Texas, to teach at the Arp Independent School, where she taught business classes and was an adviser for the school newspaper, yearbook and cheerleaders. At other schools in the following years, she taught girls physical education, coached the girls basketball and taught ninth and tenth grade English. Doerge returned to Natchitoches for one year when her husband coached at Northwestern before the couple returned to Minden. She joined the business department at Minden High as Business teacher and Advisor for FBLA and spent the next 28 years teaching there, during which time she earned a master’s degree and was named head of the department. She was among the first public school educators in the state to implement computer technology and word processing into the business curriculum. Through the years, she served as instructor for summer and night classes at Northwest Technical College in Minden and Homer and served on the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as secondary representative. She and her FBLA students earned numerous awards.
Doerge retired in 1992 after 34 years of teaching. In 1998, she was elected to fulfill the unexpired term of her husband, State Representative Dr. Everett Doerge, who died earlier that year. As a legislator, she has served on several key committees and has supported many education issues at all levels. She has been named to the NSU College of Business Hall of Distinction and was the recipient of the Golden Rose Award and the Golden Apple Award presented by the educational society Epsilon State of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society, which recognized her for noteworthy legislation impacting retired teachers’ benefits. She is a member of the FBLA Wall of Fame and received a SACS award for serving on the SACS commission from 1988-92.