The Department of Hispanic Studies of the University of Houston is the first and only in the nation to offer a Ph.D. degree in Spanish with a concentration in the literature, language and culture of Latinos of the United States. Latino or Hispanic peoples have resided in the portion of North American that became the United States before the founding of the British colonies and the American Republic. Over the courses of centuries, a native Latino culture developed, consistently enriched by immigrants and exiles from Spanish-speaking countries producing what is today the largest minority population in the United States. To meet the educational and cultural needs of what eventually will be a third of the national population, the Department of Hispanic Studies has created the US Latino concentration with content and methodologies not only for teaching the US Latino heritage language, literature and culture, but also for researching and preserving them. The concentration provides ample opportunities for students to conduct research and report on their work at conferences as well as to publish their findings. Research assistants at Arte Pblico Press and Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage gain hands-on experience in the publication of books and electronic databases of texts, the creation and management of archives, the advanced technologies involved in Digital Humanities and the details of cultural production. Teaching assistants gain hands-on experience in heritage-language education methods and practice.<br><br>The US Latino concentration offers a state-of-the art curriculum taught by internationally renowned and award-winning scholars. Their research and publications lead the field and represent the visionary approaches and content that eventually become staple for textbooks and curriculum at the general education, undergraduate and graduate levels throughout the United States. This explains the great success in placement of Ph.D. graduates of the program, many of whom now been tenured at such institutions as the Appalachian State University, Lamar University, North Carolina State University, Sam Houston State University, University of Houston Downtown, University of Massachusetts, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the University of Texas Rio Grande, among many others. The concentration allows for either specialization in literature or linguistics, with opportunities for hands-on practice in teaching heritage language to undergraduates and in researching the Latino legacy as research assistants at Arte Pblico Press, Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage and US Latino Digital Humanities.