Professor Earl W. Thomas has began teaching Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University in 1947. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Illinois (AB in Spanish 1936), he earned his master's degree (1937) there also. Ten years later he received the doctorate in Romance languages at University of Michigan. During the years in between his advanced degrees, Mr. Thomas taught Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Michigan, lived in Brazil as an Exchange Fellow, taught English at the Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos in Rio de Janeiro, and served with the U.S. Coast Guard in the Pacific.

He has also published NEW PERSPECTIVES OF BRAZIL with Vanderbilt Press in 1966.