At the 2025 Britsch Lecture, Professor Teresa Bell shared three quotes that have shaped her journey to becoming a good citizen.
“The most important thing an institution does is not to prepare a student for a career, but for a life as a citizen.” – Frank Newman
In preparing students to go out into the world and do good as upstanding citizens, one of the most impactful things a professor can do is exemplify good citizenship themselves. At her Britsch Lecture presentation on February 6, 2025, titled “How Service Unlocks the Best in Humanity,” Professor Teresa Bell (German, Second Language Acquisition) shared three quotes that have helped her become a model of good citizenship within her role as a professor and scholar at BYU.
Seeing the Best in People
To start, Bell shared a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship: “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain as he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
Bell experienced this herself during her time as a new professor at BYU. Overwhelmed by how much higher the standards for professorship were at BYU over her previous position at the University of Oklahoma, Bell found herself tempted to cut corners as she sought continuing faculty status. However, thanks to support from faculty mentors—including Associate Professor Michelle James (German), who would cheerfully remind her to “just keep publishing” every time she passed Bell in the hallway—Bell found herself inspired to put her all into every responsibility she had. She now seeks to offer the same thing to her colleagues and students, treating them the same way she believes Heavenly Father does: as people with infinite potential.
Generosity in All You Do
Bell’s second quote was from Camilla Eyring Kimball: “Never suppress a generous thought.” Bell strives to always act on promptings to be generous and has been routinely surprised by how many times a person comes back to express genuine gratitude for her actions. These encounters have reinforced for her how much good citizenship is a product of deliberately good actions. “We can recount wonderful anecdotes where people’s lives have been blessed by the actions of another person, and we can give lectures on being good citizens, but if we don’t act on the promptings to do something good, nothing will ever happen,” she said.
Be the Miracle for Others
For her final quote, Bell shared something BYU’s own President Reese said: “Expect miracles by being the miracle for others.” After hearing this in a BYU devotional, she felt inspired to give a student a ride home, and the student thanked Bell by explaining that receiving the ride felt like a miracle. Those words hearkened back to the devotional, even though the student hadn’t heard it. “I swore right then and there that I would be more mindful of spiritual promptings,” Bell said.
If we don't act on the promptings to do something good, nothing will ever happen.
It’s impossible to become a good citizen in a vacuum, of course, and Bell acknowledged that in closing: “I’m thankful for the examples of citizenship we have all around us, and when I look out at all of you here today, I see models of citizenship in people who are striving to bless the lives of others. When we look at Jesus Christ as our example of model citizenship and strive to follow Him, we will not go wrong. . . . We will unlock the best in humanities.”
Watch the full 2025 Britsch Lecture here.
The College awards this lecture to faculty who exemplify the legacy of service and citizenship that humanities professor Todd A. Britsch left.