Kiick first became interested in a career in the chemical sciences when she was at high school. She studied chemistry at the University of Delaware, from which she graduated summa cum laude as a Eugene du Pont memorial distinguished scholar. She was a Masters student at the University of Georgia, where she was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) predoctoral fellowship, and joined Kimberly-Clark as a research scientist in 1992. Kiick returned to academia for a second masters degree in polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She completed her doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellow. She completed her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst on templated macromolecular synthesis in 2001 under the supervision of David A. Tirrell, prior to starting her faculty position at the University of Delaware in 2001.