John Muir College is one of the six
undergraduate colleges at the
University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The college is named after
John Muir, the environmentalist and founder of the
Sierra Club. It has a humanitarian emphasis focused on the "spirit of self-sufficiency and individual choice". The college opened in 1967, at the height of the American
environmentalist movement triggered in part by
Rachel Carson's book
Silent Spring. John Muir College describes itself as the "Heart of UCSD" and boasts a strong and distinct character after forty years of existence.