Jong In Lim is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. He studies supportive communication and serves as a graduate teaching assistant and a graduate fellow at the Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation. He is one of the recipients of the 2025-2026 Excellence in Teaching Citation.

Like many international students from a non-English-speaking country, I grew up rarely speaking English. So when I arrived at Michigan State University to pursue my doctoral degree, spoken English was not just a challenge. It was a threshold I wasn't sure I could cross.

Before international teaching assistants can lead a classroom at MSU, they must demonstrate spoken English proficiency. I took the MSU speaking test in my first semester and fell just short. I took it again the next semester and fell short once more. For two semesters, I taught under the supervision of my head professor. Those were humbling months. I questioned whether I truly belonged here.

But I was never felt alone in that uncertainty.

My department did not see my struggles as a reason to doubt me. They offered guidance, materials and mentorship. More importantly, they gave me something harder to quantify. The freedom to try, to stumble and to try again. That kind of environment, one where a struggling student is met with patience rather than judgment, is not something every program offers. I did not take it for granted.

It was within that space of trust that I began to understand what teaching really is. Communication theorist Paul Watzlawick once wrote that every message carries two layers: the content of what is said, and the relationship that gives it meaning. A classroom is no different. What students need is not only good content, but a relationship that makes learning feel safe and possible. I know this not only as a theory, but as something I lived through myself.

When I stood in front of my own students, I try to pass that forward. I give them room to try things that might not work. I gather feedback after every session and adjust. I build activities that let them revise, reflect and learn from their own missteps. Often, I find myself returning to a phrase I heard thousand times: “Feel free to tell me how I can best assist you.” It is a simple sentence, but it signals something deeper. That their learning matters, and that they are not expected to figure it out alone. I want them to feel what I had felt. Struggle is not a sign of failure, but the very place where growth begins.

This spring, I was named one of the recipients of the 2025-26 Excellence in Teaching Citation. When I heard the news, I thought first not of myself but of the faculty and colleagues in the Department of Communication and the College of Communication Arts and Sciences who made that growth possible. This is because they believed I had the ability to succeed before I believed it myself.

The Graduate School at MSU speaks of its commitment to inclusive excellence and the belief that every admitted student has the ability to succeed and excel. It also describes its goal of creating cultures and practices so that emerging scholars will learn, thrive and accomplish their goals. I did not read those words and then experience them. I experienced them first, and recognized them for what they were only later.

That is what a supportive culture does in higher education. It does not just open a door. It makes you believe you can walk through it. And further, it teaches you to hold that door open for someone else. Because no one, truly, teaches alone.