7.26.2005 ET

(CSRwire) ROCHESTER, N.Y., - Three years ago, California computer scientist Terrance Hamilton crossed the country to become a summer intern at Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) in Rochester, N.Y. - and the research opportunities and work environment that Hamilton found have drawn the college student back every summer since.

Interning as a software engineer, he's helping Xerox improve or invent the systems that drive the company's high-speed production color printers and other sophisticated products.

"I first learned about Xerox when I was at a meeting of the National Society of Black Engineers," says Hamilton, who is pursuing his doctorate in computer science at the University of California at Riverside. "The challenges offered by the company coupled with the local culture and climate kept me intrigued."

Hamilton is one of more than 200 interns working at Xerox this summer as part of the Xerox College Experiential Learning program, or XCEL. Over the past three decades, the XCEL internship program has selected more than 3,000 college students from across the country to help engineer breakthrough imaging systems and software, work in finance, develop marketing programs, and more.

All XCEL internships are paid positions and include opportunities to work full time, in a co-op arrangement where students work full time and also receive school credit, or part time as a work/study position.

"XCEL is an incredible recruitment channel for Xerox. We're able to tap our next generation of leaders, while also nurturing the talent pool in the industry," says Leah Wallach, who manages XCEL.

Xerox offers internships primarily in Rochester, N.Y.; Wilsonville, Ore.; and El Segundo, Calif. Rochester is home to the company's largest research and engineering facilities as well as headquarters of its North American sales operations. In Wilsonville, Xerox develops office color printing systems and solid ink technology, and in El Segundo, Xerox conducts software development, engineering and research. Xerox provides travel, housing and local transportation assistance to interns.

"Rochester's many social events and welcoming nature of its residents definitely played a part in my selecting an internship with Xerox and also my choice to work for the company," says Eduardo Rodriguez, who joined Xerox in January as a full-time financial analyst after working as an XCEL intern last year. He graduated from the University of Buffalo in December with a master's degree in economics.

Xerox selects top interns through several sources, including about 20 core universities where Xerox recruits, student chapters of the National Society of Hispanic Professionals and the National Society of Black Engineers, and applicants from the Xerox Technical Minority Scholarship Program.

Since 1977, the company also has supported INROADS Inc., a national nonprofit that identifies and places ethnically diverse students in internships at leading companies like Xerox. More than 170 INROADS interns have joined Xerox laboratories and offices over the years to help refine their professional talents. Thomas Dolan, president of Xerox Global Services, serves on the national INROADS board.

First-year intern Ben Sabel learned about Xerox's internship program through Purdue University, where he is pursuing an MBA, and says he was impressed with Xerox's reputation and caliber of employees. Now working this summer in Wilsonville with an Internet marketing group to design an interactive product-selector tool, Sabel says, "I really enjoy the interaction of the internship program. Working beside and socializing with peers from diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds is an opportunity I highly value."

That kind of positive experience can lead to promising careers. Ursula Burns, currently president of the $14 billion Xerox Business Group Operations, began her Xerox career in 1980 as a mechanical engineering summer intern. More recently, Rochester resident Estelle Tickle began the first of four Xerox internships in 2001, working on the Xerox iGen3® Digital Production Press and Xerox Nuvera™ digital production product teams. After graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2005, she became a full-time software engineer producing software that controls subsystems within the Nuvera printer line.

"I really enjoyed the experience of being in the workplace before I graduated. The internship program gave me the opportunity to work on different Xerox teams," Tickle says. "I spent four years as an intern/co-op student, and I'm proud to say that I now call Xerox my employer."

Customer Contact:
For more information on Xerox internships, visit www.xerox.com/careers and click on "university."

Media Contacts
Donna Lipari, Xerox Corporation, 585-423-3036, donna.lipari@xerox.com
Kara Choquette, Xerox Corporation, 303-796-6420, kara.choquette@xerox.com

NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information on Xerox and for its RSS feed, visit www.xerox.com/news. XEROX, iGen3 and Xerox Nuvera are trademarks of XEROX CORPORATION

For more information please contact: