Veronica Cortinez

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Veronica Cortinez, associate professor, joined the UCLA department of Spanish and Portuguese in 1989, after earning her Ph.D. from Harvard. Since then, she has compiled a superb record teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Specializing in colonial and contemporary Spanish American literature, Cortinez consistently receives high scores while maintaining a reputation as an innovative, challenging instructor.

The recently named director of the University of California’s Education Abroad Program in Chile, Cortinez has designed and taught courses for students in both that country and the United States. She was instrumental in organizing an introduction to Chilean culture and politics that brought together well-known academics, politicians, military leaders, statesmen and literary artists.

Before leaving for her post in South America, she helped design an impressive website for the course, “Civilization of Spanish America and Brazil,” along with a 490-page reader and slide collection. She also helped develop “Hispanic Literature to 1700,” a new required course sequence for Spanish undergraduates and the first in the department to have its own web page.

Active on numerous graduate committees, Cortinez currently directs seven dissertations and is a member of many other M.A. and Ph.D.-level committees. While absent from campus during her tenure in Chile, she remains in constant communication with her students via email and telephone. To her credit, a number of her students have gone on to hold academic posts of their own.

“Veronica Cortinez does it all: rigorously organizes her classes, sets high standards for herself and her students, motivates them with her contagious enthusiasm, helps them grow intellectually and professionally and leads them into the profession. She seems to do it effortlessly. She is one of the few honest-to-goodness born teachers I have met in my 30-plus years in the profession.” – Carroll B. Jonson, former chair, department of Spanish and Portuguese