installing pear manually

I'm a web developer working in a somewhat restricted server environment. The unit which controls the web server we work on has refused to install PEAR to the base php directory, citing security issues. They recommended that I simply copy the files to a directory on the server and link to them from there. I'd like to use the pear packages in my projects, but downloading the packages and placing them in a directory in my file structure has not worked for me. When one package looks for pear, it looks for it in the (forgive my terminology abuse, I'm unsure of how to describe this) root directory, but of course it isn't there. Is there a way in which I can arrange the files in a directory on the webserver that I have access to in such a way that preserves the directory structure? This is my first time posting on this list, so please forgive any breach of protocol. Sincerely, Sasha Sklar Web Application Developer Wayne State University