Washington (CNN) Former President Jimmy Carter has become a tenured faculty member of Emory University after teaching at the Atlanta-based private university for more than three decades, the Georgia school announced on Monday.

"With this honor, he becomes the first tenured faculty member at Emory to hold a Nobel Prize and the first tenured faculty member to have been a US president," Emory University said in a statement. "The principle undergirding tenure -- which essentially means a continuous post as a professor -- is to preserve academic freedom for those who teach and pursue research in higher education."

The former one-term Democratic president and Georgia governor has had an extended public service career since the end of his presidency, and Monday's announcement said he has been a distinguished professor at Emory for the past 37 years.

Carter, 94, and his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, established the Carter Center in Atlanta as well in a partnership with Emory.

Alongside Monday's announcement, Emory posted a video of the former president speaking with Emory University President Claire Sterk.

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