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The college years are meant to be transformative for traditional-aged students who come into university as adolescents and leave as emerging adults. Pedagogy can play an active role in moving students through this transition by providing "ritual" occasions for students to practice their emerging identities. Public Sphere Pedagogy provides a context for bringing diverse students into the academic culture of the university through linking scholarly research to pressing public issues and requiring that students place themselves and their research in the broader context of a public sphere of peers, faculty, and community members. Public Sphere Pedagogy at California State University, Chico, has a track record of encouraging student persistence, enhancing academic engagement and strengthening students' sense of civic identity and efficacy.

This paper, based on two years of fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, analyzes cattle raising as one component of farmers' adaptive strategies in the social and ecological contexts of that region. The paper examines why cattle raising is a widespread production activity on small-to-medium farms in the region, and discusses its ecological impacts at the farm level. The ecological impacts include a tendency to retard biomass accumulation after moderate-to-heavy grazing, thereby prolonging the fallow period necessary for site recovery. The paper analyzes the implications of this ecological change on the viability of small-to-medium farms in this environment.