Curt Rice

Curtis Calvin Rice (born 1962) is an American linguist who also serves as rector of Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, the largest university college in Norway. He is the first non-Norwegian to head any Norwegian university or college. Rice will begin his rectorship on August 1, 2015.

Early career

Rice studied philosophy at Augsburg College in Minnesota and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1984. He spent the 1984-1985 academic year as a Fulbright grantee at KU Leuven, Belgium. He then went to the University of Texas at Austin for a PhD in general linguistics.

Rice grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, and graduated from high school there in 1980. He is an alumnus of Rochester Mayo High School. He is married to Tove I. Dahl, who also studied at Augsburg and is the dean of Skogfjorden, the Norwegian Language Village at Concordia Language Villages.

Academic positions

Before ascending to current leadership, Rice had been a professor in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Tromsø, Norway. He was the founding director of the first Center of Excellence in Tromsø, the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL) and he served as the Pro Rector for Research and Development from 2009-2013. Rice currently leads Norway's Committee on Gender Equality and Diversity in Research and he is the chair of the board of Current Research Information Systems in Norway (CRIStin). He also has represented the faculty on the University Board in Tromsø. He also applied unsuccessfully for the rector position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.