216-523-7474
Education
Ph.D., Urban Education, Learning and Development, Cleveland State University, 2006
MSSA, Social Work, Social of Applied Social Science, Case Western Reserve University, 1976
M.S., Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, 1974
B.A., History, Cleveland State University, 1971
Profile
Dr. Tsagaris began teaching undergraduate courses in 1992 as a part-time instructor/lecturer, primarily in the criminal justice sequence. He later taught undergraduate courses in policy, Basic Generalist Practice, Interventions II (macro practice), Integrative Seminar II and an undergraduate course in research. He has served as an adjunct professor, visiting assistant and assistant professor. Tsagaris taught his first graduate course in 2000. He has taught over 15+ undergraduate and graduate courses at Cleveland State University, as well as undergraduate and graduate courses at other universities.
Tsagaris is currently the co-chair of the CLASS Dean's Diversity Council. He has served on several committees in the School of Social Work. He has served as the Curriculum Chair for several consecutive years and was the lead faculty in the 4-to-3 credit hour conversion and curriculum chair when the social work program revised its MSW curriculum. He has served as Coordinator for Continuing Education in Social Work and conducts Social Work licensure workshops.
In 2019, Tsagaris became a member of the Sexual Violence Research and Prevention Unit of Sunshine Coast (USC), Queensland, Australia and in 2020 an academic member of the Athens Institute for Education and Researchers (Atiner), a world association of academics. He has served as president of the National Court Services Association (NJCSA), which is affiliated with the National Juvenile and Family Court Judges Association (NJFCJA). He developed two national two-week training modules on supervision and staff development sponsored by NJCSA and funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Program (OJJDP), Department of Justice. He has done consulting with a national consulting firm for the OJJDP state advisory groups in juvenile justice.
Prior to entering academia on a full-time basis, Tsagaris had 34+ years of practice experience in juvenile justice. He was deputy chief probation officer at the Juvenile Division of Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, where he was responsible for probation supervision, day reporting, community service, female gender-specific programming and probation training. He was involved in all new probation services programming, including probation. Tsagaris has written grants in the areas of faith-based services, early release of serious offenders as well as training grants for juvenile court staff.
Tsagaris also held the position of senior trainer/assistant training director in staff development and training, responsible for court-wide training. He coordinated training activities within several departments. He worked on the design and development of court-wide management training and specialized training in family therapy and counseling. He developed and monitored training grants. He has worked as an employee relations manager, acting EEO coordinator, court diversion social worker and juvenile probation officer. In addition, Tsagaris has done community planning in a United Way Agency in Michigan and held internships for Geauga County Mental and Mental Retardation (648) Board and the Federation for Community Planning, currently known as Community Solutions.