IC4A Champions (2005) Women's basketball, WNIT Champions (2014) Controversy and debate Regarding "bigger time" athletics Rutgers University's seventeenth president, Edward J. Bloustein (1925–1989) envisioned a drive for success at Rutgers that involved participation in "bigger-time" athletics. Several of the nation's colleges became associated with Division I-AA (now FCS) when that designation was established in the late 1970s, including many of Rutgers' historic rivals like Princeton, Columbia, Lehigh and Lafayette College. Bloustein decided that Rutgers ought to pursue developments that would place the university on par with comparable state universities both academically and athletically. This led to Rutgers opting for inclusion among Division I, and later, under president Francis L. Lawrence, to join the Big East Conference in 1991. William C. Dowling, a University Professor in the Department of English, and other like-minded faculty, students and alumni organized a movement known as "Rutgers 1000" in 1993, working to return Rutgers to its older tradition of participatory athletics by joining such institutions as the University of Chicago and NYU in the NCAA's Div III. Though the group dissolved itself in 2003 under the mistaken impression that President Richard McCormick supported its position, it was revived in 2007 when McCormick and the Board of Governors announced a $102 million expansion of the football stadium. Also in 2007, Professor Dowling came under fire from athletic director Bob Mulcahy, regarding remarks Mulcahy claimed to perceive as being insulting to minority athletes. In 2011, Dowling received the Drake Group's Robert Maynard Hutchins Award for his opposition to the degradation of academic and intellectual values at Rutgers by commercialized Div IA athletics. Rutgers efforts to upgrade the quality of its football program have raised criticism of many alumni, faculty and students regarding the size of athletic department's budget, wishing to divert its funds elsewhere. The athletic department's budget is $35.5 million compared to a $1.6 billion budget for the entire university. Most of the athletics budget comes from self-generating revenue (ticket sales, merchandise, broadcast rights), while the rest is taken from mandatory student fees. Though widely dismissed by Rutgers 1000 supporters as a logical fallacy the argument that having a very visible football program increases the donations to the athletic department and even the university as a whole is made by some Scarlet R supporters. An increase in enrollment applications of 12% upon joining the Big Ten Conference, and applicants who score 20 points higher on the