The University will officially kick off the largest capital campaign in the history of higher education today, in the first fundraising effort ever to include all of Harvard's ten schools.

In a press conference yesterday, President Neil L. Rudenstine announced the opening of the $2.1 billion University Campaign.

Alumni and organizers will flood the campus this weekend for a series of presentations, discussions and social events to open the campaign.

The unprecedented interschool cooperation of the drive marks Rudenstine's attempt to bring together an institution he once called "fiendishly decentralized."

The official commencement of the drive caps more than two years of planning--and fundraising--at the highest levels of the University and across all of its schools.

The campaign will focus on improving the University's existing resources and on minimizing capital additions, Rudenstine said yesterday.

"The campaign is not about expansion," the president said. "It puts a very high premium on making more of what we have... in an integrated way."

In a campaign brochure, Rudenstine says he hopes to "forge creative links between the University's different parts."

To that end, the president said Wednesday he had participated in hundreds of hours of meetings over a two-year period with the deans of the University's ten schools.

Through these meeting, in which each school submitted a list of needs and a budget, the deans became familiar with the problems facing each of Harvard's separate faculties, Rudenstine said.

The University is "in a time of scarce resources," according to Rudenstine, because the era of plentiful funding that began after World War II ended in the early '80s and was replaced with a period in which universities have a much harder time garnering contributions.

In an interview detailing the UniversityCampaign process Wednesday, Rudenstine used theterm "lining the envelope" to describe hisstrategy of improvement rather than expansion.

Of the $2.1 billion total, the largest segmentis the $965 million target of the Faculty of Artsad Sciences (FAS).

Harvard's professional schools' goals total$861 million, with the Business School topping thelist at $220 million.

The final $235 million will go to the newlycreated President's University Fund, thecenterpiece of Rudenstine's centralizationefforts. The fund will be used to support newinitiatives and to bolster financially strappedsegments of the University as needed.

Rudenstine yesterday, listed five "themes" onwhich he sees the campaign focusing: improvingundergraduate teaching, increasing andstrengthening interfaculty programs, addinginternational programs, redesigning professionaleducation and ensuring the availability of studentaid.