The faculty of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University is committed to undergraduate and graduate students. We offer courses in language, literature, linguistics, and culture,as well as courses in Catalan. Our faculty has been recognized nationally and internationally for research, and members of the department have won numerous teaching awards. In 2007, the Faculty Productivity Index ranked us number one as the most productive graduate program in the country in our field. 

Our courses cover a full range of time periods, geographical spaces, genres, themes, and approaches. We value excellence, personal attention, and mentoring. Our classes are small, and the student-faculty ratio at the graduate level is roughly 1.7:1. We invite many guest speakers to campus each year and regularly sponsor conferences on literature, culture, and teaching. In addition to teaching and research, our faculty is actively engaged in service to the profession, and we house two academic journals.