She graduated from East High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1910.
Kittell spent nineteen years teaching in various elementary and secondary schools in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Nebraska, after receiving her PhD she spent twenty-nine years as a biology professor at Holy Family College in Manitowoc.
She also spent a year as a guest professor at another Catholic institution, Chaminade College in Honolulu, Hawaii.
After the closing of the college in 2020 the herbarium was acquired by the local Woodland Dunes Nature Center.
[2] Kittell retired in 1971, before Holy Family was separated from her order and became Silver Lake College.