Mar 14, 2014 06:07 PM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Northwestern University in Illinois announced Friday it is kicking off an ambitious $3.75 billion fundraising effort for its school, The Chicago Tribune reported.

There is no end-date to the campaign, but officials at the Evanston-based institution said they hope the goal will be reached within five years, The Chicago Tribune reported. The money raised will be used for a series of new buildings and renovations while also endowing professorships, creating scholarships and supporting research, among other plans.

"We have some big plans," Northwestern President Morton Schapiro told the Tribune. "We were thinking about all these great ideas, and how much each budget would need to be. You add it up and it's an enormous number.  At the end of this decade, this place will be greater than it is now."

The money raised will pay for new buildings, including an athletics and recreation complex along Lake Michigan; student scholarships, including more aid for students from Chicago and abroad; endowed faculty positions; and research and academic programs in areas as diverse as biomedicine and music.

The school currently provides nearly $300 million annually in student scholarships and fellowships, most of which comes from general revenue. The school wants to increase the amount of scholarships funded by endowments in order to have a steady stream of income to pay for financial aid in the future.

"There are so many areas that people can get involved in, but the focus is on students and making sure Northwestern is affordable and has the best facilities and the best dormitories and the best learning," Christopher Combe, a Northwestern alumnus and co-chair of the campaign, told The Chicago Tribune.

The school has already secured $1.52 billion - about the entire amount raised during the school's last major fundraising effort, which ended in 2003, The Chicago Tribune reported.

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