Burnout and Job Satisfaction Among Counselor Educators

The relationship between burnout and job satisfaction among counselor educators was investigated. A total of 220 full-time counselor educators participated in this quantitative research study. Emotional exhaustion seemed to be the most significant predictor of burnout among counselor educators. Implications for counselor education and future research are discussed. Keywords: burnout, job satisfaction, counselor educators, higher education ********** Professional counselors are responsible for providing quality services and care for clients. Because of this responsibility, counselors are encouraged to examine their wellness to facilitate their personal and professional growth (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2005). With a belief that well counselors are competent counselors who promote the client's well-being, findings from numerous studies (e.g., Myers & Sweeney, 2005; Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000; Rosenberg & Pace, 2006) suggest that it is important for counselors to attend to their personal wellness to effectively serve their clients. Given the importance of counselors' wellness, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP; 2009) suggested that counselor education programs integrate a wellness concept in the curriculum and facilitate personal and professional development of counselors-in-training. To support this notion, Hill (2004) noted that counselor educators who are attuned to their own wellness will facilitate the development of counselors who are aware of their own wellness and are therefore better able to work with clients regarding their wellness issues. Thus, wellness is not only important to counseling and counselor training but is also an integral fit with humanistic counseling. Within a humanistic counseling framework, counselor educators promote trainees' personal growth and professional development through meaningful humanistic interactions and relationships (Association for Humanistic Counseling, 2012). CACREP (2009) required counselor education programs to encourage students' academic excellence and to foster an understanding of self-care strategies appropriate to the counselor role (Section II, G.1.d.). To adhere to the standards and accomplish the goal of humanistic counseling, counselor educators should strive toward social and emotional wellness. When counselor educators experience burnout and have a potential risk to become impaired, they affect the quality of counselor training as well as the clients served by counselors-in-training (Hill, 2004). Similar to other teaching professionals, counselor educators can experience burnout because of the nature and expectations of the higher education teaching profession and the demands of the counseling profession (Hill, 2009; Mintz, 1999). In their study, Leinbaugh, Hazler, Bradley, and Hill (2003) noted that stressors caused by the demands of the counseling profession had a potential impact on the attrition rates of counselor educators. Leinbaugh et al. concluded that perceptions of personal well-being were pertinent to the decision to maintain a career as a counselor educator. Additionally, Hill (2009) suggested that a "lack of realistic expectations about the demands and resources experienced by counselor educators prevents the development of appropriate coping strategies to manage occupational stress" (p. 59). A career in academia could be a stress-inducing experience for counselor educators because of the nature of the work in academia (e.g., teaching, research, and service). When faculty members are required to focus on exceeding these expectations, they seem to pay little attention to developing adequate coping strategies for these stresses and practicing self-care (Magnuson, Norem, & Lonneman-Doroff, 2009). Wellness issues among counselor educators are increasingly recognized in the counselor education professional literature. …