Staff photo / Raymond L. Smith Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel makes a point Wednesday during an update of the YSU Foundation’s “We See Tomorrow” campaign.

YOUNGSTOWN — Raising more than $100 million in five-and-a-half years — instead of the seven years originally projected when the Youngstown State University Foundation’s “We See Tomorrow” campaign began — has emboldened the university’s leadership to increase the campaign goal to $125 million by June 2021.

In announcing the new goal on Wednesday, YSU President Jim Tressel joked, possibly half-heartedly, that he encouraged the board to have a goal of $150 million by the end of the campaign.

He was convinced otherwise.

“I love to stretch people into doing better,” he said. “Maybe we can surprise people again and do even better.”

The “We See Tomorrow” $100 million campaign is the most ambitious undertaken in YSU’s 112-year history and the YSU Foundation’s 54-year history.

When the “We See Tomorrow” campaign began, it was hoped the university would reach its campaign goal by June 2021. It earned $101,545,750 nearly 18 months early.

The campaign obtained 27,000 gifts, including 32 donations of $1 million or more and 39 gifts of $100,000 or more from out-of-town donors, said Jocelyne Kollay Linsalata, a YSU Foundation trustee and its campaign chairwoman.

“Members of the YSU Foundation’s campaign committee donated $8.6 million on their own,” she said.

Linsalata said various families have donated large endowments to various departments at the university.

Money raised in the campaign is being targeted to a variety of areas, including providing scholarships and student work opportunities, endowed chairs and professorship positions, campus beautification enhancements, and creating a new Excellence Center on the south end of the campus.

“This will make YSU more attractive and improve the quality of our faculty,” she said. “Most of the money is not being targeted toward brick and mortar, but toward creating educational opportunities for students. ”

Linsalata said the university is getting an increasing number of students from outside the five counties that surround YSU.

Tressel added that throughout most of the history of YSU and Youngstown College, 90 percent of its students were from the surrounding counties in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. Today, however, only about 70 percent of its students are from these areas.

“It will continue to be a goal of ours to increase the attractiveness of the university from those living in our immediate area to people across this state, nation and internationally,” Tressel said. “They should be attracted to our great programs and our partnerships with businesses and organizations.”

Funds from this campaign give faculty and staff extra assistance to do research and opportunities to take students out of the immediate area and abroad for educational opportunities.

Alanis Chew, a senior studying business, economics and math, received multiple scholarships from the university and from her department that allowed her to stay at the university.

Chew, an international student from Malaysia, said she was able to work at the university and grow confident in her majors.

“I’ve been blessed,” Chew said. “Scholarships have been helpful. They’ve helped me to finish school. I want to be an analyst.”