The Norwegian School of Sport Science was opened in 1968 with a new campus on the border of beautiful Nordmarka Forest and with Lake Sogn just 400m away. The location was chosen intentionally to give access to the forest and lake for both teaching and recreational purposes for our students and staff.

The conference venue is at the campus of The Norwegian School of Sports Sciences.

With the opening of the new school in 1968, it was placed under the Ministry of Science and Research together with the universities and the other poly-technic schools (Engineering, etc). At this point research and development became an additional aim of the school and the Master’s degree program was launched shortly after opening. The undergraduate program was extended to a full three years and many students who wished to teach began doing a second teaching subject at university or regional college. The Master’s program was another two years thus enabling s to provide quality teachers, administrators, coaches and an emerging sport science milieu. The school was also designated at this time by the ministry as the institution with particular national responsibility for sport science and our library became the central library for sport science for all of the Nordic countries.

 

The main auditorium at the Swimming Research congress in 2010.

 

In 1987 the Ph.D. program was launched and the Masters and Undergraduate programs were reorganized accordingly. To accommodate the new academic profile and activities of the school, a new centre for teaching and research was opened in 1994. This new facility contains state of the art laboratories for both biomechanics and physiology. A unique feature of this building is that several laboratories open onto a large common area with a high ceiling to allow investigation of a large number of activities in as realistic a manner as possible. It also allows for more multi-disciplinary research as experiments crossing over between biomechanics and physiology are much more easily conducted.

 

 

The school has also had a long tradition of research in the area of asthma and physical activity in cooperation with the Voksen Toppen Pediatric Asthma Centre and the Norwegian asthma and Allergy Association. A research laboratory exists for this purpose. Auxiliary labs also exist for various biochemical analysis and muscle cell physiology.

 

Two additional satellite research facilities have been developed in recent years. One is the Ball Sport facility which combines state of the art video recording of matches and computer steered time/space “game analysis”. The second facility is the Aquatic Centre which is now equipped for a variety of possibilities for underwater video recording for biomechanical analysis and classic Douglas Bag energy cost research. These facilities have had wide usage and have attracted a growing number of post graduate students and clients requesting contract research.

 

Since about the start of the new millennium, the Swimming research Centre has been particularly productive with a variety of activities. A training pool for rowing, with moving water, has been adapted for simple experiments as a form of swimming flume. A race analysis system has also been installed in the main pool and has been used during various competitions. And lastly, a comprehensive swimming school has been established both as a community service and to allow educational research activities.

Today our school is home to over 1000 students and new programs have been added. We have adapted our facilities to accommodate persons with special needs. We have a specialty program for training leaders in Special Needs Sport and we also have a quota of students with special needs who are integrated directly into the regular programs for other students. Key staff in this program has aquatic backgrounds and research has been conducted especially with paediatric cardiovascular disease.

The school is staffed by approximately 120 academic staff, 50 technical staff and 50 administrative staff. We have a lower student-staff ratio than most higher education institutions and are blessed with excellent facilities.