Fay Carpenter Kirchman graduated with honors from Westhampton College of the University of Richmond with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and attended graduate courses in Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She worked for the Glen L. Martin Company in Baltimore as an Aeronautical Engineer in the 1940s, where she met her husband, Edward Kirchman. In later years Mrs. Kirchman taught Physics Lab and tutored Calculus at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD. She was the mother of 5 children, two of whom are aerospace engineers.