Assisstant Professor
Professor Parinandi is one of the newest additions to the Department of Political Science - arriving at the University of Colorado in the fall of 2015. “I chose to come to CU because it is a big research university that has a solid commitment to teaching” he said.
This is especially important to Parinandi because teaching is one of the main factors that brought him into the realm of academia. “I enjoy teaching and I especially enjoy lecturing when it sparks a debate in class because it means that students are exchanging ideas and grappling with the material.”
This semester Parinandi is teaching the American Presidency (3011) and is enjoying how engaged students are with the topic.
“Students are paying much more attention to the theories written on presidential behavior because of their interest in the current administration and there’s been a lot of give and take between the students and myself which has made it a blast to teach.”
In addition to teaching, Parinandi likes the research component of being a professor. “I enjoy coming up with a theory and trying to test whether the theory is supported by evidence or not and trying to communicate that to others.”
Parinandi focuses much of his research on how policies spread across the states by looking at different factors that heighten or hinder the spread of policy. “I specifically look at renewable energy policy and economic policy.”
“My real motivation for it is this idea that the U.S is a federal system and in the U.S the national government benefits from having the 50 states as laboratories that it can copy off of and find the best policies.”
In 2015, Parinandi taught a class he created called “Issues and Challenges in American Green Energy Policy”. “A lot of people know about renewable energy from a surface level, but there wasn’t a class in the Political Science Department.”
This class addresses “the nuts and bolts of what green energy policies are, what they look like, how they work, and how they are situated in terms of other energy policies.”
“I want students to be able to talk about green energy policy from a deeper level and be able to explain how the policies function.”
For Parinandi, the most notable part about working on an active college campus is simple: “Just being able to teach and interact with students is the best part about being at CU.”