Intel New Mexico employees top $3,000,000 in local giving

The employees of Intel New Mexico have completed their most successful fund-raising campaigns in the history of the Rio Rancho manufacturing plant, donating more than $1,547,000 to United Way of Central New Mexico. These funds will be matched by the Intel Foundation, resulting in more than $3 million generated by the fall fund drive. More than 48 percent of the site’s employees participated, resulting in an overall increase of more than $200,000. In 2005, Intel New Mexico and its employees donated $2.8 million to United Way, accounting for 16 percent of the funds raised for the community campaign.

“This is an historic achievement by Intel and its employees. It is the largest corporate gift in our organization’s seventy-two-year history and it is driven by outstanding employee giving. Impressive as it is, it is only part of the Intel story.

ntel’s giving is coupled with commitment to service in the community. Intel employees are encouraged to give back to the community and they do just that in so many ways—much of it through United Way, but with many other organizations as well. Intel Corporation and its employees are a stellar example of corporate citizenship in our community,” said Jack Holmes, president and CEO of United Way of Central New Mexico.

"Intel's culture includes focusing on setting challenging and competitive goals, and being an asset to our communities worldwide. The United Way campaign gives employees a chance to excel at both, and this year’s results are reflective of Intel New Mexico’s culture,” said Tammy Wash, Fab 11 factory manager and 2006 Intel Campaign chair. "Two years ago, we celebrated Intel NM's first $2 million gift to UW, and this year we get to celebrate our first $3 million campaign."

United Way fund-raising efforts at Intel New Mexico began this year with summer sporting events to raise funds and awareness. These special events included a first-ever thirty-six-hour-hour video-game tournament, basketball, table tennis, and a fun run. Employees also participated in an eBay-style auction of many locally donated items. At the core of the effort were more than sixty employee meetings featuring information about philanthropy and the United Way. More than 120 Intel employees volunteered to assist with the campaign.

In addition to the actual fund-raising campaign, Intel provided the United Way with a full-time loaned executive for thirteen weeks during the heaviest part of the community-wide campaign.

Skating champions coming to Santa Ana Star Center

For the past twenty years, Olympic champion and figure-skating icon Scott Hamilton has thrilled audiences with Smucker's Stars on Ice–"Double Exposure: The Many Lives of Figure Skaters." As part of its twenty-first season as America's premier figure-skating tour, the show will visit the Santa Ana Star Center, in Rio Rancho, on January 30, for a 7:00 p.m. performance.

The all-new “Double Exposure: The Many Lives of Figure Skaters” will be co-headlined by the world's most distinguished skating stars, including 2002 Olympic Pair Champions Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, two-time Olympic Gold Medalist Ekaterina Gordeeva, 2002 Olympic Men's Champion and four-time World Champion Alexei Yagudin, World Champion and six-time U.S. National Champion Todd Eldredge, World Champion and two-time Japanese National Ladies Champion Yuka Sato, World Bronze Medalists and three-time U.S. National Pair Champions Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman, eight-time British National Men's Champion Steven Cousins, two-time U.S. National Pair Champion Jason Dungjen, six-time Canadian National Ladies Champion Jennifer Robinson; and, celebrating his first year with the tour, two-time World Bronze Medalist and three-time U.S. National Men's Champion Michael Weiss.
There will also be a guest appearance by Olympic Gold Medalist Ilia Kulik.

A portion of the proceeds from each ticket will be donated by Smucker's Stars on Ice to Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

Tickets for the performance start at $25 and may be purchased at the Rio Rancho Santa Ana Star Center Box Office, Get Tix outlets, the Santa Ana Star Casino Guest Services, www.GetTix.net, or (866) 443-8849. For groups of fifteen or more, call (505) 891-7307.

For more information about the tour, visit www.starsonice.com.

Explora opens new Shapes of Sounds exhibit area

Explora presents new ideas you can touch and new experiences in sound for people of all ages. Visitors to the museum are encouraged to see and experience the new exhibit area, Shapes of Sounds, which is filled with a variety of exhibit activities for individual or group exploration:

• Investigate how mass, tension, and length affect the sounds that you hear.
• Experience which frequencies of sound you can feel but not hear.
• Experiment with a strobe of light to see how frequency affects a rippling membrane.
• Challenge yourself to create a melody on the Melody Maker.
• Delve into the properties of waves while investigating the timbre qualities that make a piano sound different than a trumpet.
• Investigate how vibrations are instrumental in creating sound.

Explora’s exhibit team strives to make exhibits with transactive qualities, such that both exhibits and users are changed, even in small and unexpected ways, by an encounter.

Many visitors may not know that most of Explora’s exhibits and exhibit activities are developed and built on-site. The scale of most exhibits is small, fitting on tabletops. The parts are hand-sized and made for handling.

Among Explora’s exhibits, irregular mazes of mobile walls and small tables create personal spaces for individuals or families that support focus, attention, semi-privacy, and conversations.

Shapes of Sounds is free with general admission to Explora. Explora’s hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 6:00 p.m.; closed on January 1. Explora is in Albuquerque’s historic Old Town, 1701 Mountain Road. Additional information is available at (505) 224-8323, explora@explora.us, and www.explora.us.