Sally M. Horner, executive vice president at Coastal Carolina University, has been named the recipient of the 2001 Martha Kime Piper Award. Given annually by South Carolina Women In Higher Education, the award recognizes a woman with a record of advancing and supporting women in higher education and the education of women in South Carolina.

"Sally Horner has long been a listener and builder of women on Coastal's campus and throughout her 41-year career," said Coastal President Ronald R. Ingle, who nominated Horner for the award. "Since she came to Coastal in 1984, she has personally mentored and guided many faculty and administrators, both women and men, to attain higher goals, through professional development and expanded educational opportunities."

Horner, who is also serving as interim provost at Coastal for the 2001-2002 academic year, was named executive vice president in 1993. She had served as vice chancellor for planning and fiscal affairs at Coastal since 1984.

From 1978 to 1984, Horner held several top administrative positions at the University of Charleston in West Virginia including acting president, vice president for administrative services, provost, dean of the Morris Harvey College of Arts and Sciences, and acting dean of the College of Health Sciences.

Horner was also on the faculty at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., from 1965 to 1978, where she served as chair of the department of chemistry and physical science, director of institutional research, director of financial aid, and taught courses in inorganic, physical, analytical and general chemistry, physics and astronomy.

She also has held post-doctoral research appointments at Duke University, the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Horner earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate, and received a three-year pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

She served two consecutive three-year terms as elected commissioner of the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Horner is a member of the Board of Trustees at Conway Hospital and is chair of the advisory committee for the oversight of Kingston Nursing Home of Conway Hospital. She was also appointed by former Gov. Carroll Campbell to the Board of Directors of the Waccamaw Center for Mental Health from 1993 to 1996.

Sally Hare, Singleton Endowed Professor of Education at Coastal and director of the university's Center for Education and Community, is a past recipient of the award.