Vance Rice began working at Mississippi State University as chief of police in 2014.
While at MSU, he incorporated body-worn cameras for police officers, hired MSU’s first Life Safety Manager and upgraded weapons for better active shooter response.
Rice is from a town close to Fayetteville, Prairie Grove in northwest Arkansas. He started in the law enforcement career by seeing an opportunity for his wife to go to school. 
“I was working in security and I heard campus police were given discounts, University of Arkansas had a 50 percent discount for spouses of employees,” Rice said. 
He planned to be in this career for only a few years and even left to work elsewhere. Yet he realized he enjoyed the work he was doing as campus law enforcement and has not left the career since. 
Rice was at the University of Arkansas for 25 years, and when he left he was able to retire before becoming the police chief at MSU. His day-to-day job varies, spending about 65 percent of the time in the office, overseeing his officers, doing paper work and making sure personnel with the university is good. 
“There is more to campus police than law enforcement, we get involved in all aspects of safety and security on campus,” Rice said. “It can even be with the fire department, when they get a call my officers respond.”
His biggest achievement, he feels, is being able to go to the FBI National Academy event. 
This is a sponsored event for local law enforcement and administrators. In order to be invited, one has to be nominated by their chief, the nominations go to the local FBI office, and then the selection process begins once an officer is chosen. 
Rice’s experience at the University of Arkansas included creating a “life safety” division for the school, and the use of canine dogs. 
“Canines are another big thing that help get the job here because it is what MSU wanted,” Rice said.
One of the craziest events that Chief Rice has had to deal with in his career was the active shooter scare in the fall of 2015. 
“That was a tough day for a lot officers,” Rice said. “The tough thing about it is we all drill, we train, but you always know it’s not real. But that was real, and what officers thought they were going into was real.”
While the end result of that incident was a good one, there were some things Rice saw needed improvement. The communication between all outside agencies to one place at MSU were not up to his standards. He believes there needed to be one focal point from the outside to the inside having a face-to-face conversation. Rice said  face-to-face is the best solution in those situations.
After the incident, and still to this day Rice said he  encourages his officers to seek mental health, especially being in the careers they are in. 
“We push it and talk about it [mental health] to our officers, Rice said. “We have the EAP Program, Employee Assistance Program, and there are counselors available all the time. We highly encourage our officers to go talk to them.” 
Another improvement found by Rice after the active shooter scare was the maroon alert system. 
“Our maroon alert system is not the greatest,” Rice said.  “We want to install a single system that hits everything. And [these systems] are out there, they just aren’t cheap.” 
While the chief has to decide what the money is spent on throughout the department, he does not determine how much they get. The campus police  received three budget cuts from the state recently. 
Since Rice has progressed from an officer at Arkansas to a police chief now, the biggest difference he sees between the top and the bottom is the way of looking at the job. 
“A patrol officer and maybe even a fifth, sixth year officer’s main concern is doing there job, as a chief I am looking at what they’re doing and how they are doing it, what affect it will have on the university and the media,”  Rice said.  “So, I’m more concerned about the result.”
Rice’s office is decorated with his FBI National Academy frame, two basketballs signed by Arkansas (when he retired) and by Ben Howland. 
Rice also shows off a proud cowbell that reads, “Best Overall” which is an award the police department  won for the best Christmas video at last year’s Christmas get together. 
Rice said  he enjoys the people he works with. 
“The MSU department had a lot of issues when I got here,” Rice said. “One of the things we don’t have a problem with is people, there are a lot of great people here.”
Roxanne Raven, Student Association president of 2016-2017 and senior political science major, said MSU is lucky to have Rice.
“Chief Rice is so hard working, has an incredible amount of knowledge and, most importantly, is compassionate towards students,” Raven said. “Chief Rice works day in and day out to make campus safer for students and is accomplishing this each day through technological advances and attracting great officers.”
Sid Salter, MSU’s chief of communication officer, said Rice was a great addition to MSU.
“Chief Vance Rice has brought a culture of professionalism and dedication to MSUPD that truly compliments the overall Student Affairs mission. He is well-respected across the university by faculty, staff and students alike.