Speakers

Jeff Mittie, one of the winningest active coaches in NCAA Division I with more than 575 career wins, 20 postseason appearances, nine conference titles, and five conference coach of the year honors in 29 years of coaching, enters his eighth season at the helm of the K-State program in 2021-22.

During the summer of 2019, K-State and Mittie agreed on a contract extension through the 2023-24 season.

Mittie, introduced as the ninth head women’s basketball coach in K-State history before the 2014-15 season, has achieved an overall record of 579-332 (.636) in his previous 29 years as a head coach, including a 125-97 (.563) record at K-State in his previous seven seasons. His .636 career winning percentage ranks among the top-50 active Division I head coaches and 22nd among active coaches with 20 or more years experience.

Mittie has averaged 20 wins per season and experienced only one losing season in his 28 years of head coaching. Twenty times Mittie has advanced his teams to either the NCAA or WNIT tournaments, in which he has a combined record of 20-18.

Mittie has received a number of accolades during his coaching career including 2010 Mountain West Coach of the Year, 2002 Conference USA Coach of the Year, 2001 WAC Coach of the Year, and 1994 and 1995 MIAA Coach of the Year. He has also led his programs to nine conference titles.

A native of Blue Springs, Missouri, Mittie earned his undergraduate degree in sports management from Missouri Western in 1989 and his master’s in sports management from the United States Sports Academy in Mobile, Ala., in 1992. During the fall of 2016, Mittie received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Missouri Western.

Mittie and his wife, Dr. Shanna Mittie, who is a native of Junction City, Kansas, and a graduate of Chapman High School, are the proud parents of three children, daughters Logan and Madison and son Jordan. Logan serves as a high school coach in Texas, while Jordan played football at K-State and Madison played women’s basketball for Fort Hays State.

Landry Brewer is Bernhardt's Assistant Professor of History for Southwestern Oklahoma State University and teaches at the Sayre campus. Brewer is also the author of Cold War Oklahoma. He and his wife, Erin, have five children and live in Elk City.

Kansas played an outsized role in the Cold War when civilization's survival hung in the balance. Forbes Air Force Base operated nine Atlas E intercontinental ballistic missile launch sites. Schilling Air Force Base was the hub for twelve Atlas F ICBMs. McConnell Air Force Base operated eighteen Titan II ICBMs. A Kansas State University engineering professor converted a discarded Union Pacific Railroad water tank into his family's backyard fallout shelter. A United States president from Kansas faced several nuclear war scares as the Cold War moved into the thermonuclear age. Landry Brewer tells the fascinating story of the highest-level national strategy and how everyday Kansans lived with threats to their way of life.