Frank Sundram is diplomatic to the degree that in an interview last month, he refused to acknowledge death.

Discussing WVIK, the Augustana College-based public-radio station that broadcasts at 90.3 FM in the Quad Cities and 95.7 FM in Dubuque, Sundram said: "The challenge for us is how we replace our audience. As members leave us - due to life circumstances - how do we start a relationship with the next two generations below us? ... It's going to happen through the Internet. It's going to happen through our digital channels. It's going to happen through other means."

The truth of history usually takes decades to emerge from the overload of the present, but in 1876 Frederick Douglass made an assessment of Abraham Lincoln that remains succinct, elegant, and accurate: "From a genuine abolition point of view, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent, but measuring him by the sentiment of his country - a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to discuss - he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."

I am on the hunt.

I carefully guide myself through the woods beyond my backyard on this rainy May morning, stepping over the underbrush and dead tree trunks searching for springtime's woodland gem: the morel mushroom.

Peter Kivisto offers this observation about Augustana College President Steven C. Bahls.

"Somebody'd have a new book, and the next thing you know, you'd have a little letter from him congratulating you," said Kivisto, the Richard Swanson Professor of Social Thought at Augustana and the past chair of the faculty senate. "That's on the cheap, but it meant a lot to us."

It's an admittedly minor thing, but it speaks to Bahls' style, and style counts for a lot in leadership. The Rock Island liberal-arts college is not an autocracy, and the power of its president to create change largely rests with his ability to inspire and guide, particularly the faculty and the board of trustees.