Peirce Eichelberger was honored with the Leadership Award, which is presented to members who have demonstrated exemplary leadership to URISA, creativity, innovation, and dedicated support of URISA programs. Peirce has nearly 30 years of professional experience, beginning his career in the Planning Department for the City of Miami. Since 1998, he has been the GIS Manager for Chester County, Pennsylvania. Peirce has been involved with a multitude of URISA programs and initiatives over the years. He attended his first URISA Annual Conference in 1976 and hasn't missed one since. He presented his first paper at a URISA conference in 1980 and since then has presented at too many URISA annual and specialty conferences to count. Since 1980, Peirce has been an active URISA Certified Workshop author and instructor and was involved with the development of a number of workshops over the years. Peirce was one of the key individuals involved in the development of the URISA/IAAO partnership which started with the publication of the "GIS Guidelines for Assessors" publication and has developed into a very successful URISA/IAAO specialty conference, Integrating GIS & CAMA.

Peirce is also very involved and well-known for his work with addressing. Regularly involved with URISA's Street Smart and Address Conference, Peirce was the Conference Chairman for the second addressing conference. Peirce has served two three-year terms on the URISA Board of Directors and most recently (2002) served as URISA President.

The URISA Service Award is presented to members who have demonstrated faithful service to URISA and participation in its program over a period of several years. Two individuals were awarded the URISA Service Award this year, Anne Payne and Ed Wells.

Anne Payne began her career at North Carolina State University's Center for Urban Affairs as a Research Associate/Project Manager. She worked for the City of Raleigh as a Data Services Supervisor and has been the GIS Database Administrator for Wake County since 1988. At that time, she joined URISA and has been extremely active at both the chapter and international level since then. Anne has been President of the North Carolina Chapter of URISA and is very involved with all of the chapter programs. Anne has presented at numerous URISA annual and specialty conferences and served on the Annual Conference Committee in 2000. Anne has been an active member of the Chapter Relations Committee for years and is currently the Board Liaison to the CRC. She was very instrumental in reviving the Industry Relations Committee. Anne just completed a three-year term on the URISA Board of Directors and recently became a Certified GIS Professional.

Ed Wells began his GIS career in 1984 as a Principal Planner for the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. He is currently the Senior Project Manager for the Washington DC Office of the CTO.

Ed joined URISA in 1984 and has attended all but two annual conferences since then. He's also been incredibly active at the chapter level. He was the founding President of the Central Appalachian URISA Chapter and has been involved since 1990. Ed was an ESIG Award reviewer and was on the Chapter Relations Committee for several years, chairing the CRC in 1997. Ed has presented at numerous URISA conferences and has served as a Track Leader a number of times. Ed was elected to the URISA Board in 2000 and recently completed a very active three-year term. Ed's main focus in 2004 has been to lead the Workshop Development Committee in a massive and much-needed task. Under Ed's direction, an ambitious joint effort from workshop authors, instructors and the Workshop Development Committee, has resulted in seven new URISA Certified Workshops and four significantly updated workshops.

Source: URISA, Dec. 1, 2004