Huntsville civil engineer Maxwell R. Carter, PE, CFM, has spent a little over one year building and overseeing something he wished he had available to him when he was in school. The 30-year-old Huntsville High School and University of Tennessee–Knoxville graduate is the creator of The Engineering Resource, a free online platform designed to help students, early-career engineers and seasoned professionals navigate the often scattered landscape of engineering information.

Carter launched the site after purchasing the engineeringresource.org domain for about twenty dollars. He built it himself on a free website platform and has kept the project intentionally low-cost and completely free to users. “It is not commercialized. There are no advertisements and no marketing,” Carter explained.

Despite that shoestring approach, the site has grown steadily. It has been linked by nine universities in total, mostly through their career centers, and by two engineering associations. Two Ivy League institutions, Harvard University and Dartmouth College, have also linked to the site, an early milestone that surprised Carter. Those links, along with consistent updates, have helped the site build strong SEO performance. Google Search Console shows the site recently crossed one thousand clicks and more than one hundred thousand impressions.

Users appear to come from a wide range of backgrounds. “I see a mix of professionals and students,” Carter said. “The training pages and webinars get a lot of attention because people are looking for continuing education or professional development. Scholarships are a big one too.”

The site organizes information across dozens of categories, gathering links to engineering associations, scholarships, accredited degree programs, job boards, continuing education resources, design manuals and technical documents.

Carter describes himself as more of an aggregator than a content creator. His blog focuses on career guidance for students and young professionals, with plans to expand into topics he uses in practice, including how AI has become useful in civil engineering and the limitations he has experienced with it. One of his posts discusses the difference between academic engineering and real-world practice, a page he recommends as a helpful reference for students.

One of the most visited pages is the Student Resources section, which Carter recently gave its own subdomain at students.engineeringresource.org. The page directs students to the Jobs, Fields of Engineering and Scholarships sections of the website, along with ABET-accredited degree programs and academic resources. There are some internship links within the Jobs section. Co-ops, he noted, are managed directly by universities and employers. The page also highlights organizations that offer free or discounted student memberships. “They can join those groups and get the perks of membership, which is really valuable when you are starting out,” he said.

Carter’s interest in engineering has deep family roots. His grandfather moved the family to Huntsville around 1960 after working as a surveyor during World War II and later for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force. He eventually became an estimator for NASA, working on infrastructure projects across Redstone Arsenal. Carter said his grandfather received a service award presented to him directly by Wernher von Braun, an image captured in the background photo on The Engineering Resource website. “He was not a rocket engineer, but he did surveying, construction and facilities work that supported a lot of activity on Redstone,” Carter said.

Carter sees The Engineering Resource as a long-term project. He plans to add more technical topic pages, particularly in areas where he has spent time learning on his own. His concrete pavement page, for example, compiles key manuals, specifications and ASTM standards that professionals rely on. “I think there is a strong base now,” he said. “There is still a lot more I want to add.”