When President Neil L. Rudenstine took office in 1991, the first thing he did was hit the brakes.

In the late 1980s, former President Derek C. Bok and former Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence had plotted an all-out drag race of a capital campaign, with an almost apocalyptic goal of $3.6 billion.

The Bok campaign, which included a $2 billion goal just for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, would have been more than twice as big as any fund drive in the history of the higher education.

Rudenstine, however, wanted a more carefully choreographed plan that meshed with his vision of an integrated University that exalted cooperation.

So he delayed the fund drive and launched a two-year planning effort involving administrators across the University.

The president attracted some criticism, but no one could fault his thoroughness. Deans met and learned about parts of Harvard they never knew existed. Vice Presidents and other officials were away for planning retreats.

"The people at the top are concerned not only with their own goal," says Dean of the School of Education Jerome T. Murphy, "but with the other subparts as well."

All told, Rudenstine says he put together 70 different events to talk about co-operation.

"The planning was coordinated on a number of levels because of the president's review," says Vice President for Alumni and Development Fred L. Glimp '50. "First each dean came up with an academic plan, followed by a financial plan and finally a fundraising plan."

Last months, Rudenstine officially kicked off his version of the campaign. It has less horse power than the flashy plan proposed by Bok, but its goal--$2.1 billion--is still the larger in the history of higher education.

For students of the University, the campaign offers insight about how the different parts of Harvard will cooperate in the near future.

The campaign is useful primarily as a symbol; what the University absolutely must do for its long-term health, officials say, is to turn Harvard's separate financial structures into a single, fiscal behemoth.

"The campaign won't be the reason for great unification," Glimb says. "It will be the financial structure of the future that will make us do more with the same."

The campaign also highlights the limitations of bringing Harvard closer together. For all of Rudenstine's planning, his University Campaign is not so much one fundraiser as it is several drives.

So while the president has dropped the campaign goal and slowed the pace, he still does not have the money engines of harvard's ten faculties roaring to gether.