Roberto Avant-Mier, Ph.D., has been a professor at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) since 2010 and moved up as the Department of Communication Chairman in the beginning of fall 2025. Being new to the position, Avant-Mier says he is excited to lead and improve the department.
Before starting his college career at UTEP, Avant-Mier was a U.S. Marine, which initially made him want to go to college after being released in 1994. Finishing his college education in 2004 with his Ph.D., Avant-Mier began teaching at Boston College then moved to El Paso where he was offered a job at UTEP in 2010.
After past chairman, Richard Pineda, Ph.D., left the position, Avant-Mier was promoted to be a full professor. Avant-Mier thought it was perfect timing to take on this responsibility after being the highest ranked professor in the communication department.
“At this point, I am the highest-ranking professor [in the] department that hasn’t been a chair,” Avant-Mier said. “It’s an opportunity to lead the department, and that could mean leading it in new directions, reinforcing it. I’m saying there is potential in shaping it.”
Communication changes rapidly, and Avant-Mier says that he has noticed an incline and decline of certain majors in this division. This led him to the realization that there is a need to adapt the curriculum to meet students’ interests and stay up to date with technology.
“We have a major called corporate communications and the enrollment in that major has been down, so that speaks the questions of, are students not interested?” Avant-Mier said. “On the flip side we have had a rapid increase in film studies and have also an increase in DMP [Digitial Media Productions]. Do we want to make film and DMP stronger, offer more classes, hire more professors? What are we currently offering to what students’ want now and then going into the future?”
UTEP is filled with Hispanic and international students. Avant-Mier believes that the communication department does well in opening students’ perspectives of the international world and hopes to leverage it more.
“We are multilingual or at least bilingual. I think our department’s curriculum has to adapt to that,” Avant-Mier said. “We have to teach those things and use them as a strength, our jobs are to meet students on where they are and emphasize it moving forward.”
Taking this new position, Avant-Mier sees this opportunity as a complete change for this department. Getting to hear from his colleagues and students about what the communication department holds and what it can improve on makes him look forward to being the chairman.
“I hope stepping up in this leader position I can take us in a positive direction and hit the reset button, and if that means hiring more professors [and] changing the curriculum, I think there’s an opportunity to do something new and make corrections.”
Avant-Mier emphasizes his continued commitment to making the UTEP Department of Communication even better to serve students and faculty.
Mia Colmenero is Layout Editor and may be reached at [email protected]
