Los Angeles Valley College

About: Los Angeles Valley College is a education organization based out in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Metaphor & Cognitive poetics. The organization has 35 authors who have published 55 publications receiving 873 citations. The organization is also known as: Valley College & LA Valley College.

Differences in perceived barriers to volunteering to formal organizations: Lack of time versus lack of interest

Abstract: This article reports the findings of a study of perceived barriers to volunteering to formal organizations by nonvolunteers. We examine the types of barriers, their frequencies, and their relationships with individual-level sociodemographic characteristics of nonvolunteers. Data from a 2001–2002 national survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics are analyzed using multiple regression techniques. Contrary to general expectations, only three barriers—lack of time, lack of interest, and ill health—are fairly common. Furthermore, as expected, different social class groups identify different types of barriers. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical implications of the findings (for example, how indicators of social and cultural capital affect access to volunteer opportunities) and practical implications concerning recruitment of volunteers.

Student Persistence in Community Colleges

Abstract: The current study extends the research on student persistence in community colleges by investigating factors likely to influence a student's decision to drop out or stay in school. Specifically, this study examined demographic, financial, academic, academic integration, and psychosocial variables and their relationship to student persistence. A sample of 427 community college students completed a 63-item survey assessing psychosocial variables (i.e., self-efficacy and goals) the academic integration variable (i.e., student-faculty interaction), and a number of background variables (i.e., demographic, financial, and academic). In addition, student retention was measured through college enrollment the following semester. Results of the study revealed that age, work hours, and financial aid influenced student persistence, but the effects diminished once multiple variables were entered into the analysis. Among all the variables, cumulative GPA was the strongest predicting variable for student persistence. Stu...

Ethnicity, Acculturation, and Volunteering to Organizations A Comparison of African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Whites

Abstract: This article reports the findings of a study of volunteering to organizations among native-born and immigrant African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Whites in the United States. The authors focus on the questions, do ethnic groups differ in their likelihood of volunteering, and are these differences a function of acculturation? The conceptual framework to explain formal volunteering includes acculturation, personal and social capital, gender, and age. Using logistic regression analysis, the authors find that acculturation explains formal volunteering only partially and differently among the groups and that each native-born and immigrant group has its own unique combination of predictors of volunteering.

Metaphor Making Meaning: Dickinson’s Conceptual Universe

Abstract: If meaning, understanding, and reasoning in human language are achieved through bodily experience and figurative processes, as recent work in cognitive linguistics has argued, then the traditional notion of a separation in kind between ordinary discourse and poetic language no longer holds. Metaphor making, under this view, is not peripheral but central to our reasoning processes, not unique to poetical thinking but that which is shared by both ordinary discourse and the language of poetry. Poets, then, in their metaphor making, serve as arbiters of and commentators on the way humans understand and interpret their world. Much of Dickinson’s poetry is structured by the extent to which she rejected the dominant metaphor of her religious environment, that of LIFE IS A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME, and replaced it with a metaphor more in accordance with the latest scientific discoveries of her day, that of LIFE IS A VOYAGE IN SPACE. Examples from her poems show how the schemas of PATH and CYCLE and the AIR IS SEA image metaphor contribute to a coherent and consistent patterning that at the same time reflects a physically embodied world and creates Dickinson’s conceptual universe.