One day after leaving the State Department, Ambassador John Negroponte ’60 announced Wednesday that he would join Yale’s faculty in the fall of 2009.

Negroponte, who until Tuesday served as deputy secretary of state and was the country’s first director of national intelligence between 2005 and 2007, will spend at least three years at Yale as a lecturer and senior research fellow. In that time, he will co-teach the Studies in Grand Strategy seminar and will also teach an undergraduate and graduate course in international studies and international relations.

“Now that I’ve retired from my government post, I would like to share some of the perspectives and experiences that I’ve picked up in 44 years of government,” Negroponte said in a phone interview with the News. “I’ve always been attracted to the idea of teaching about diplomacy and national security policy, and this is a great opportunity for me and hopefully for my students.”

Negroponte said he will start off co-teaching Grand Strategy in the fall semester, and will also teach a class of his own beginning in the spring. He will travel to Yale once a week, spending the rest of his time in Washington, D.C., where he will work as vice chairman of McLarty Associates, a global consulting firm.

John Gaddis, director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, said Negroponte brings a lifetime of experience that will benefit his students at Yale.

“Look at the number of jobs he’s held,” Gaddis said. “It’s quite remarkable. One of the things we’ve been trying to do in the Grand Strategy program is to bring more practitioners to campus, and we’re very fortunate to have landed him.”

Indeed, the 69-year-old Negroponte is nothing if not a diplomatic practitioner. Since graduating from Yale, where he was affiliated with Davenport College, Negroponte has devoted nearly five decades of his career to foreign service. He has served as the United States permanent representative to the United Nations as well as ambassador to four countries — Honduras, Mexico, the Philippinies and Iraq — and was an important adviser to President George W. Bush ’68.

Negroponte will now become the Brady-Johnson distinguished senior research fellow in Grand Strategy and lecturer in international affairs at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, according to a University statement.

Ted Wittenstein ’04, who served as an aide to Negroponte when he was both director of national intelligence and deputy secretary of state, said the ambassador would serve as an exemplar of public service to Yale students.

“He’s certainly imbued in me a real commitment to my country and to the importance of serving my country,” said Wittenstein, himself an alumnus of the Grand Strategy program. “He’s someone who’s held real leadership positions in Washington and all around the world and he’ll be a great addition to the team.”

Negroponte said he previously taught a seminar on scientific technology and diplomacy at Georgetown University when he was serving as assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the late 1980s.