Valeda F. Dent

Valeda F. Dent serves as Emory University’s inaugural vice provost of Libraries, Michael C. Carlos Museum, and Center for Digital Scholarship, a position she began in July 2022 that unites Emory Libraries and the Michael C. Carlos Museum under a new leadership structure.

She works closely with the Office of the Provost to provide support in planning for the future of both areas, including advancing shared discovery and conservation of the university’s extraordinary collections while continuing to expand access, programming and community engagement.

In her role at Emory, Dent helps shape the libraries’ and museum’s support of the student flourishing and AI.Humanity initiatives. “Aligning teaching, learning and research opportunities with the mission of Emory University,” Dent remarks, “can help build a community of caring, well-informed and civically engaged students, and the museum and libraries can play a pivotal role.” 

Dent came to Emory from Hunter College of the City University of New York in New York City, where she served as acting provost and vice president for academic affairs as well as vice president for student success and learning innovation. 

At Hunter College, Dent was co-chair of the Presidential Task Force for the Advancement of Racial Equity. Important to her work at Emory, Dent believes strongly in the role of the library and museum in civic outreach and has a deep understanding of libraries and museums as centers of community empowerment and civic responsibility. Dent is an active scholar who travels, conducts and publishes high-impact research, and presents globally. She has a robust and consistent record of scholarly achievement in the areas of chronic poverty and literacy, rural African libraries, and literacy culture development and is a Fulbright Scholar. 

Prior to her appointments at Hunter College, Dent served as dean and university librarian at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and dean and chief operating officer for the libraries at Long Island University. 

She holds a PhD in information science from Long Island University, an MSW and an MILS from the University of Michigan, and a BA in film studies from Hunter College.

Recent book chapters

Dent, V. (2023). The University Perspective. In King, B. (Ed.), “New Directions in University Museums”. London, U.K.: Lords Publishing. 

Dent, V. & Goodman, G. (2022). Rural Community Libraries in Uganda: Impact and Outcomes. 
In Lo, Peter, Wu, Stephanie, Stark, A., and Allard, B. (Eds.), “Literacy and Reading Programmes for Children and Young People: Case Studies from Around the Globe”. Palm Bay, FL: Apple Academic Press.  

Goodman, G., & Dent, V. F.  (2019).  Studying the effectiveness of the Storytelling/Story-Acting (STSA) play intervention on Ugandan preschoolers’ emergent literacy, oral language, and theory of mind in two rural Ugandan community libraries.  In M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), “Early childhood development:  Concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications” (Vol. 3, pp. 1174-1205).  Hershey, PA:  IGI Global.

Recent peer-reviewed articles

Dent, V., Goodman, G., Nimmakayala, K., Morejon, A., Vinh, T., Ottolin, T., & Sutherland, J. “Using a machine learning algorithm to classify drawings of Ugandan preschool children in an early intervention program.” Paper submitted to Empirical Studies of the Arts (under review).

Goodman, G., Dent, V., Lee, S., & Tuman, D. (2022). “Drawings from a play-based intervention: Windows to the soul of rural Ugandan preschool children’s artistic development.” The Arts in Psychotherapy, 77, 101876. 

Goodman, G. & Dent, V. (2020). “Representations of Attachment Security, Attachment Avoidance, and Gender in Young Ugandan Children”. Attachment & Human Development, DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2020.1830480.

Goodman, G. & Dent, V. (2019). “When I Became a Refugee, This Became My Refuge: A Proposal for Implementing a Two-Generation Intervention Using Yoga and Narrative to Promote Mental Health in Syrian Refugee Caregivers and School Readiness in Their Preschool Children.” Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, DOI: 10.1080/15289168.2019.1680939.

Goodman, G. & Dent, V. (2019). “A Story Grows in Rural Uganda: Studying the Effectiveness of the Storytelling/StoryActing (STSA) Play Intervention on Ugandan Preschoolers’ School Readiness Skills.” Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, DOI: 10.1080/15289168.2019.1654272.  

Recent research presentations

Goodman, G., Dent, V., & Coşkun, A. Ugandan caregivers’ content relevance and mental state talk as predictors of preschool children’s mental state talk.  Paper presented at the meeting of the International Psychoanalytic Association Annual Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, July 28- 31, 2025.

Passerini, K., Dent, V., Gurani, H., Aksoy, L., Frascatore, M., Joseph, J., & Sharpe, N. How to mitigate risks to academic quality. Panel, Deloitte Risk Management Symposium, New York City, October 30, 2024.

Fleming, D., Barsch, A., Fannon, J., Haushalter, S., Kim, D., Li, C., Marure, C. C., Yang, E., Yang, V., Zhou, D., Zweig, R., Dent, V., & Goodman, G. Relationship between Ugandan caregivers’ quality of life and their storytelling content relevance.  Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Seattle, WA., August 8-10, 2024.

Zhou, D., Barsch, A., Fannon, J., Fleming, D., Valle-Frias, K., Haushalter, S., Kim, D., Li, C., Marure, C. C., Yang, E., Yang, V., Zweig, R., Dent, V. F., & Goodman, G. Relationships between caregivers’ storytelling content relevance and indices of school readiness in rural Ugandan preschoolers.  Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Seattle, WA., August 8-10, 2024.

Dent, V., Goodman, G., Nimmakayala, K., Morejon, A., Vihn, T., Ottolin, T., & Sutherland, J. Using machine learning to explore Ugandan children’s stages of drawing development. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, Ottawa, Canada, June 25- 30, 2024.

Fleming, D., Goodman, G., & Dent, V. Relationship among caregivers’ storytelling content relevance and attachment in rural Ugandan preschoolers.  Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, Ottawa, Canada, June 25- 30, 2024.

Goodman, G., Dent, V., & Coşkun, A. Ugandan caregivers’ content relevance and mental state talk as predictors of preschool children’s mental state talk.  Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, Ottawa, Canada, June 25- 30, 2024.

Dent, V., Donahue, V., Lubin, M., Sharpe, N., & Stanley, Tarshia. Expanding the Liberal Arts for Workplace Readiness. American Association of Colleges & Universities Annual Conference, Washington D.C., January 17-19, 2024. 

Goodman, G., Dent, V. F., Chung, H., Cantas, N., Fanciullo, M., & Toker, A.  Once upon a time:  Studying the efficacy of the Storytelling/Story-Acting (STSA) play intervention on Ugandan preschoolers’ narrative coherence, class rankings, and mental state talk in two rural Ugandan community libraries.  54th Society for Psychotherapy Research Annual Conference, Dublin, Ireland, June 21-24, 2023.