Miguel Montiel is the Motorola Presidential Professorship Emeritus and Southwest Borderlands Scholar with the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. He is married to Yvonne and has two daughters Aida and Maritza. He has degrees from the the Unviersity of Arizona, ASU, and University of California Berkeley - where he served as an assistant professor. He came to ASU in 1974 and held assignments in social work, Barrett Honors College, the Hispanic Research Center and public affairs. In the 1980s, he served as assistant vice president for academic affairs. It was during this period that he attended the Institute of Educational Management at Harvard University. He worked for the City of Phoenix as a loaned executive.
Montiel chaired the Human Services Commission for the City of Phoenix, served on the board of the Arizona Center for Public Policy and as a member of the Arizona Judicial Council. Montiel's work at ASU is documented in a book with Raymond Padilla entitled, Debatable Diversity: Critical Dialogues on Changes in American Universities (1998). His efforts from the Motorola Project will be documented in forthcoming book with Tomas Atencio and Tony Mares entitled, "Resolana: Emerging Chicano Dialogues on Community and Globalization," University of Arizona Press.