Curt Rice

Curt Rice

Curtis Calvin Rice (born 1962) is an American-born Norwegian linguist and the rector of Oslo and Akershus University College, the largest university college (høgskole) in Norway. Rice is the first rector of his institution who was not elected; he began his rectorship on 1 August 2015. He is not the first non-Norwegian to head a Norwegian university or college, as the University of Oslo has had several non-Norwegian chancellors.

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 a professor of educational psychology at the University of Tromsø as well as 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 studies generative grammar and phonology. 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 applied unsuccessfully for the rector position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Writing

Rice writes for The Guardian about open access, leadership, and gender equality issues in higher education.