Renee Krebel is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Illinois and a Doctorate of Social Work Candidate at the University of Kentucky. Renee began her education with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from McKendree University, immediately followed by her Master’s in Social Work from Saint Louis University. Renee has over twenty years of clinical experience, including experience in community mental health, domestic violence and child abuse in military families, and private practice counseling.
She began her academic career by developing a course focused on military psychology in 2013. Since then, Renee has taught as an online adjunct at two universities while doing full-time clinical work. In 2019, Renee became a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor™. In 2020, Renee was selected for the Associate Faculty of the Year award at McKendree University. In August 2020, Renee began a full-time academic appointment in the online Master of Social Work program at the University of Pikeville in Eastern Kentucky. She serves as the Assessment Coordinator for this program, teaches primarily social work practice classes, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2024.
Renee’s research interest focuses on mitigating burnout in online social work students. In her capstone, she identified a gap in research of teaching burnout prevention skills in online programs within helping professions and proposed a need for a paradigm shift away from the term “self-care.” Her practice application paper focused on designing and implementing online curricular assignments and resources to help students develop habits in preventing burnout outside of a standard self-care plan.
DSW Showcase Student Presentation
Renee Krebel
MSW, LCSW, RPT-STM, DSW Candidate
The Role of Online Social Work Higher Education in Burnout Prevention
Concentration - Social Work Education
- Monday, April 28, 2025 -
- 10:30 am
Abstract
This presentation seeks to increase understanding and identify implications and recommendations for social work education’s role in teaching burnout prevention skills to online social work students in order to help address the social worker shortage. Three academic works are reviewed. The systematic literature review explores what has been done in online education for students majoring in social work and other related professions. The conceptual product defines burnout and self-care and reviews the literature identifying the increased problems with social workers relying on self-care alone to prevent burnout. A paradigm shift to the innovative concept called “well-care”, which is grounded in Job Demands-Resources Theory and Black Feminism, is suggested as a way to address the shortcomings of self-care. Well-care is defined and analyzed for strengths, limitations, and potential for change in social work practice. Finally, practical ideas for online social work education practice are outlined to arm educators with the knowledge of what can be done in an online format to help students learn to regularly incorporate well-care habits to prevent burning out from the social work profession.