On August 1, 2015, Curt Rice became the Rector (President) of the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus).

In addition to his work as Rector, Curt Rice leads Norway’s Committee on Gender Balance and Diversity in Research, and is the head of the Board for Current Research Information System in Norway (CRIStin). In all of these roles, he works to pursue his conviction that research and education are essential to improving society and that making universities better therefore has the potential to make societies better.

He’s currently writing a book on gender balance. Beyond this book project, he uses his speaking and writing engagements to reach audiences on the topics that excite him the most: gender balance, open access, leadership issues and more.

Before this, from 2002–2008, he was the founding director of the university’s first Norwegian Center of Excellence, the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL). Then, from 2009–2013, Curt Rice served as the elected Vice Rector for Research & Development (prorektor for forskning og utvikling). After 2013, he was elected by the faculty in Tromsø to represent them on the university board (2013–2015).

Curt Rice is also part of the European Science Foundation’s genderSTE COST action (Gender, Science, Technology and Environment); he helped create the BALANSE program at the Research Council of Norway, designed to increase the numbers of women at the highest levels of research organizations. He is on the Advisory Board of the European Commission project EGERA (Effective Gender Equality in Research and Academia); he was on the Science Leaders Panel of the genSET project, in which he advised the European Commission about gender in science; he is also a member of the Steering Committee for the Gender Summits.

He also led a national task force on research-based education that issued many suggestions for Norwegian institutions. Finally he has created the crowd-sourced alternative contest to the European Commission’s Science: “It’s a girl’s thing” teaser video (co-sponsored by the European Science Foundation and Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt).