to validate that problem solving does exist in the classes used in this study. Faculty

members were asked questions regarding age, gender, years of teaching experience, and

academic department. Faculty members also provided the researcher with syllabi and

additional information to describe the course. Finally, participating faculty members were

administered Kirton's Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) (Kirton, 1999) to determine

their cognitive style. Descriptive statistics were used to report determined values.

 For objective two, four instruments were administered to nine undergraduate

student classes to determine each student's cognitive style, stress, motivation and

engagement in their respective course. The KAI provided a measure of each student's

cognitive style. Level of student stress experienced in the classroom was determined

using the Student-life Stress Inventory (SSI) (Gadzella & Baloglu, 2001). The Motivated

Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia & McKeachie,

1991) was administered to measure student motivation in the classroom. The NSSE was

used to determine student engagement. Descriptive statistics were used to report

determined values.

 For objective three, cognitive style gap was calculated by subtracting faculty

members' cognitive style scores from each student's cognitive style scores as measured

by the KAI. The same procedure was used to determine gaps within the constructs of

cognitive style. These calculated values were used to find correlations with constructs of

stress, motivation, engagement and selected student demographic variables. Objective

three was accomplished using bivariate correlation.

 For objective four, dependent variables including student stress, student

motivation, and student engagement were each separately explained by the independent