Undergraduate Program Overview — B.S. in Government Business Development
The full undergraduate tier of the Dream Pursuit Doctrine curriculum: a four-year bachelor's program that takes a student from "where does federal money live?" to a defended, stack-free pursuit package built from a real solicitation. Four years, four rungs: foundations → core → electives → capstone.
Program name (working): Bachelor of Science in Government Business Development (GBD) Launchpad Sandbox equivalent: the Bachelor's "Dream Foundations" degree guide (see align/concept-to-system-map.md — Degree ↔ Fellowship ↔ Course crosswalk, L1 Explorer) Course prefix: DL (consistent with the existing course catalog, e.g., DL 401) Total: 120 semester credit hours · Duration: 4 years, 2 semesters/year · Format: 14-week terms, one 75-minute session per week per course (plus independent reading, labs, and assignments)
The one rule that governs everything in this program: the concepts are durable and the tools are swappable (
doctrine/08). Every course below is stack-agnostic by design. A student can complete this degree with paper, a pencil, a web browser for SAM.gov and Grants.gov, and this repository. No course, assignment, or exam depends on a software product — and that is the point.
What this program is
Government business development — the discipline of finding, qualifying, pursuing, and winning federal and public work — is not a lottery. It is a pipeline, and the pipeline is teachable. This program teaches the pipeline, the gate, the score, and the ORBITAL as durable ideas, then trains students to apply them to real documents and real decisions.
The program is concept-first and literacy-first:
- Concept-first. The doctrine (
doctrine/01–doctrine/08) is the spine of every course. Students learn where the money lives, how solicitations work, the shape of the pursuit pipeline, the discipline of gates, the arithmetic of scoring and price-to-win, the ORBITAL skeleton, and the Dream → ORBITAL → World lifecycle. - Literacy-first. Alongside the concepts, students learn to read the real documents of the market — RFPs, NOFOs, award records, money-flow data — using the
literacy/maps as their reference layer. Every course reads real, published, closed solicitations. Nothing is invented; nothing is live. - Inviting to non-experts. No prior knowledge of contracting, finance, or law is assumed. The program is written for a first-year undergraduate who has never heard of a UEI or an RFP and ends with a graduate who can build an ORBITAL from a raw solicitation and defend it to a skeptical panel.
The program is one tier of a larger ladder. The same doctrine powers a master's tier (built on the existing MBA and MPA tracks), a doctoral tier, and the Launchpad fellowship. The Bachelor's tier is the foundation: Dream Foundations — where the money lives, how the documents work, and how a pursuit becomes a structure.
Degree title options
The architecture is the same; the title on the diploma is a host-institution choice:
| Title | When to use it |
|---|---|
| B.S. in Government Business Development | A standalone professional degree (this document's working title). |
| B.S./B.A. in Business Administration with a concentration in Government Business Development | When the DL sequence sits on top of a shared business core. |
| B.A. in Public Affairs with a concentration in Government Business Development | When the host institution houses it in a policy/public-affairs college. |
| B.S. in Capture Management | When the institution wants the industry-familiar name (Capture Management is the APMP-recognized discipline name). |
The Launchpad Sandbox refers to the bachelor's tier as "Dream Foundations"; the program map below uses the working title and cites the fellowship equivalence.
Program-level learning outcomes
By graduation, a student will be able to:
- Explain the market. Describe where federal and public money lives, how it flows from appropriation to award, and the identifiers, registries, and small-business programs that structure access to it.
- Read the documents. Read an RFP, a NOFO, an RFI, and an award record: locate the scope, the eligibility, the evaluation criteria, the compliance requirements, and the deadlines; and separate a compliance reading from a strategy reading.
- Draw the pipeline. Draw the pursuit pipeline from memory (sense → qualify → score → pursue → design → audit → submit → deliver → learn), name the purpose of every stage, and place any real activity on it.
- Run the gates. Design a gate with all four parts (trigger, criteria, decision, owner), write criteria before the work begins, and govern a pursuit through the seven-gate capture lifecycle.
- Score and price. Compute a pursuit score (pWin × value), argue the factor breakdown honestly, apply a threshold, and build a defensible price-to-win position from a cost floor, a competitive range, and an evaluation posture.
- Build an ORBITAL. Take a real solicitation and produce a seven-axis ORBITAL — objective, resources, budget, indicators, transport, activities, logistics — with real, sourced content.
- Produce a proposal package. Translate an ORBITAL into a proposal structure — technical, management, past-performance, and pricing volumes — managed through a compliance matrix and the color-team review discipline.
- Reason about the law. Explain the public-side rulebooks (the FAR and the federal grants framework), where fairness is enforced, and how private-side gates meet public-side governance.
- Use the data. Read the published record (awards, spending, forecasts) to sense opportunities, estimate win probability, and measure pipeline health.
- Negotiate and deliver. Prepare for and conduct a principled negotiation, and connect delivery and past performance to the compounding loop of the lifecycle.
- Stay stack-agnostic. Tell a durable concept from a swappable tool on sight, and operate confidently as the tools change.
Credit-hour model
A standard 120-semester-credit-hour bachelor's. The DL sequence is the distinctive spine; general education, professional foundations, and free electives provide the university's distribution and the student's headroom.
| Component | Credit hours | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| General education & university requirements | 40 | Host institution's distribution (written/oral communication, mathematics, social science, humanities, natural science, plus any first-year seminar). |
| Professional foundations (prerequisite) | 12 | Applied statistics for business, microeconomics for public & commercial markets, financial accounting fundamentals, business & professional communication. Taught by the host institution; prerequisites for the DL core. |
| Major core — required DL courses | 15 | DL 101, DL 102, DL 210, DL 220 (12) + DL 480 Capstone (3). |
| Upper-division electives | 12 | Choose 4 of DL 301–305 (a 5th is recommended for specialization; see below). |
| Free electives | 41 | Deliberate headroom: a complementary minor, a double major, or the DL 390 practicum/internship (3 SH, supervised field experience) fits here. |
| Total | 120 |
Design note on the free-electives room. The distinctive DL spine is intentionally lean (a small set of durable, stack-free courses), and the 41 SH of free electives are a feature, not a gap. They let a student build a complementary profile — accounting, data analytics, public policy, cybersecurity, project management — without inflating the core. Host institutions that want a heavier professional core can require additional electives or fold their own contract-management and public-administration courses into the DL elective menu.
DL 390 — Practicum in Government Business Development (3 SH, optional, encouraged). A supervised field experience inside a pursuit organization, a small-business development center, or a public-procurement office. The student keeps a doctrine journal (every task mapped to a pipeline stage or gate) and writes a one-page reflection on what the field confirmed or complicated about the doctrine. Satisfies 3 SH of free electives.
How the courses ladder
The program is a strict ladder: each rung assumes the rung below it.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ DL 480 Capstone │ Year 4 · Spring
│ Build an ORBITAL (real solicitation) │ prereq: DL 210, DL 220,
└───────────────────┬─────────────────────────┘ 2+ electives
│
┌─────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┐
│ DL 301 · 302 · 303 · 304 · 305 │ Year 3 · both semesters
│ Upper-division electives (choose 4) │ prereq: DL 210 / DL 220
└─────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┘
│
┌─────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┐
│ DL 210 Capture & Pursuit DL 220 Pricing & │ Year 2 · Fall / Spring
│ Pipeline Price-to-Win │ prereq: DL 101 + DL 102
└─────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┘
│
┌─────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┐
│ DL 101 Foundations ──► DL 102 Reading the │ Year 1 · Fall / Spring
│ of Government Solicitation │ prereq: none / DL 101
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
Professional foundations (12 SH) + general educationThe laddering rule. Every course states its doctrine spine, its prerequisites, and where it sits in the pursuit pipeline. Nothing in the upper-division tier assumes knowledge that the core did not teach; nothing in the core assumes a tool that a student must have encountered. The whole ladder is stack-free.
Four-year course sequence
Year 1 — Foundations (introductory sequence)
| Semester | Course | SH | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall | General education courses | 9 | |
| Fall | DL 101 — Foundations of Government Business | 3 | No prerequisite. The landscape: money, market, pipeline, gates, ORBITAL, lifecycle, case. |
| Fall | Professional foundations | 3 | |
| Spring | General education courses | 9 | |
| Spring | DL 102 — Reading the Solicitation | 3 | Prereq: DL 101 (or co-requisite). The document: RFP and NOFO literacy, compliance and strategy reading. |
| Spring | Professional foundations | 3 |
Year 2 — Core sequence
| Semester | Course | SH | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall | DL 210 — The Capture & Pursuit Pipeline | 3 | Prereq: DL 101 + DL 102. The heart of the major: pipeline, gates, the seven-gate capture lifecycle, ORBITAL, GROWTH. |
| Fall | General education / foundations | 12 | |
| Spring | DL 220 — Pricing & Price-to-Win Fundamentals | 3 | Prereq: DL 101 + DL 102 (+ applied statistics). Scoring, thresholds, cost floors, competitive range, margin discipline. |
| Spring | General education / foundations | 12 |
Year 3 — Upper-division electives
Choose four of the following (a fifth is recommended for a specialization). All are 3 SH, 14-week terms.
| Semester | Elective | Prereq |
|---|---|---|
| Fall | DL 301 — Procurement Law & FAR Fundamentals | DL 102 |
| Fall | DL 302 — Proposal Production & Compliance | DL 210 (or co-req) |
| Fall | DL 303 — Government Contracts & Subcontracting | DL 210 |
| Spring | DL 304 — Data Literacy & Analytics for Capture | DL 210 + applied statistics |
| Spring | DL 305 — Negotiations | DL 220 (or co-req) |
A typical split: two electives in the junior fall, two in the junior spring. Students pursuing a proposal/capture specialization take DL 302 and DL 303; a pricing/business specialization takes DL 304 and DL 305; a policy-leaning student takes DL 301 and DL 304. The 5th elective may replace a free elective.
Year 4 — Capstone
| Semester | Course | SH | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall | Final elective or specialization course | 3 | Complete the elective menu or add a complementary course. |
| Fall | DL 390 Practicum (optional) | 3 | Supervised field experience. |
| Fall | General education / free electives | 9 | |
| Spring | DL 480 — Capstone: Build an ORBITAL | 3 | Prereq: DL 210, DL 220, and 2+ electives. Full brief in course/capstone-build-an-orbital.md; undergraduate extension in course/undergraduate-480-capstone-build-an-orbital.md. |
Course catalog (the DL sequence)
| Number | Title | SH | Tier | Spine | Assessment shape |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 101 | Foundations of Government Business | 3 | Intro | doctrine/01, 03, 04, 08 | Weekly artifacts, money-map midterm, market-map portfolio |
| DL 102 | Reading the Solicitation | 3 | Intro | doctrine/02 + RFP/NOFO literacy | Weekly artifacts, real-RFP midterm, solicitation reading portfolio |
| DL 210 | The Capture & Pursuit Pipeline | 3 | Core | doctrine/03, 04, 06, 07 | Gate charters, capture plan, full pursuit plan |
| DL 220 | Pricing & Price-to-Win Fundamentals | 3 | Core | doctrine/05, 06 | Scored sheets, price-to-win recommendation |
| DL 301 | Procurement Law & FAR Fundamentals | 3 | Elective | doctrine/01, 02, 04 | Clause hunts, law-and-compliance review |
| DL 302 | Proposal Production & Compliance | 3 | Elective | doctrine/02, 03, 06 | Compliance matrix, volumes, color-team report |
| DL 303 | Government Contracts & Subcontracting | 3 | Elective | doctrine/01, 03, 07 | Teaming plans, delivery plans |
| DL 304 | Data Literacy & Analytics for Capture | 3 | Elective | doctrine/01, 03, 05 | Data profiles, scoring models, analytics memo |
| DL 305 | Negotiations | 3 | Elective | doctrine/04, 05 | Negotiation plans, role-play defenses |
| DL 390 | Practicum in GBD (optional) | 3 | Field | the full doctrine | Doctrine journal + reflection |
| DL 480 | Capstone: Build an ORBITAL | 3 | Capstone | the full doctrine | Full pursuit package + defense + post-mortem |
Course descriptions live in each course's own file in this folder; the descriptions here are one-liners for the catalog.
Where the existing course (DL 401) fits
The repository's current standalone offering is DL 401 — The Dream Pursuit Doctrine (course/syllabus-semester.md), a 14-week course mixing the shared core with the Strategic Initiative, MBA, and MPA tracks. In the degree ladder, DL 401 is an advanced/graduate-altitude course: it assumes working adults or graduate students and teaches the doctrine to all three audiences in one room.
The Bachelor's tier does not replace DL 401. It builds under it:
- The undergraduate introductory sequence (DL 101, DL 102) gives a first-year student what DL 401 assumes its students already have — a working map of the market and the documents.
- The undergraduate core (DL 210, DL 220) goes deeper into the pipeline and the pricing arithmetic than DL 401's single-semester survey can.
- DL 401 remains the bridge to graduate study: a student who finishes the Bachelor's capstone can take DL 401, the MBA/MPA tracks (
modules/mba.md,modules/mpa.md), or the Strategic Initiative track (modules/strategic-initiative.md) as the first course of a master's tier.
In a host institution that offers both, DL 401 is the recommended graduate gateway. In an institution offering only the undergraduate tier, the undergraduate core plus the capstone covers the same doctrine at a first-degree depth.
The Launchpad fellowship crosswalk
Per the Degree ↔ Fellowship ↔ Course crosswalk in align/concept-to-system-map.md:
| Degree guide (Launchpad Sandbox) | Innovator's Launchpad level | Course/audience | Core doctrine focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's (Dream Foundations) | L1 Explorer | DL 101, DL 102 + literacy | Where the money lives, RFP/NOFO basics, DREAM discovery |
| Master's (Curiosity in Action) | L2 Builder | DL 401 + MBA/MPA tracks | ORBITAL structure, proposal writing, scoring & price-to-win |
| Doctoral (Visionary Leadership) | L3 Architect + L4 Networker | advanced modules | Gates & governance, pipeline orchestration |
| Global Impact (Post-Doctoral & Executive) | L5 Leader | capstone + strategic-initiative | Lifecycle, cosmology loop, executive stewardship |
The Bachelor's tier is deliberately the L1 Explorer rung: it gives the student the market, the documents, and the first full structure (the ORBITAL), and it hands them up to the master's rung already fluent in the doctrine's vocabulary.
Assessment philosophy
Every course uses the public-rubric discipline from course/assessments-and-rubric.md:
- Concepts, not recall. Courses test whether a student can do the discipline — read a document, build a structure, make a call — not recite definitions.
- The rubric is public. Students see the grading contract before they do the work — the doctrine's own gate discipline applied to the classroom.
- Real artifacts. Every major assessment is built on a real, published, closed solicitation. There is no "invent an RFP" anywhere in the program.
- Stack-free. A deliverable may be a paper chart, a whiteboard, a spreadsheet, or a word-processed document. It may never depend on a specific product or system (
doctrine/08). - Self-checks, not pop quizzes. Every doctrine reading ends with a 3-question self-check for the student; graded assessment is always against the published rubric.
The standard split within each course is: weekly assignments 30%, midterm 25%, final major deliverable 30%, participation and peer review 15%. The capstone uses the shared capstone rubric with the undergraduate extensions described in course/undergraduate-480-capstone-build-an-orbital.md.
The shared teaching objects
Every course in the program uses the same three anchors:
- The doctrine (
doctrine/01–doctrine/08) — the durable concepts, read in order and re-encountered at increasing depth. - The literacy layer (
literacy/) — the glossary, acronym decoder, RFP/NOFO reading maps, and money-flow map — the student's reference shelf. - The Ravonics case (
case-study/ravonics.md) — the shared canary company, used in every course so that every student exercises the same firm through the same doctrine, the same way the machine side of the wider ecosystem validates the doctrine.
The capstone is the moment all three converge: a real solicitation, a real company (Ravonics by default), and the full doctrine.
Policies worth stating plainly
- The doctrine is the curriculum. Every assignment tests the concept, never a tool. If an assignment ever seems to require knowledge of a specific product or system, that is a bug in the assignment — flag it.
- Real documents, safe exercises. We read real RFPs, NOFOs, and award records, but always published, closed ones. Students never submit anything live in this program.
- The pipeline has deadlines; so does the program. The one professional grace: an honest early warning beats a silent late submission.
- Academic integrity. The federal market runs on trust in a fair, documented process. This program models that. Cite your sources; do not fabricate evidence; be the person the market can trust.
The program in one sentence
Four years to turn a student who cannot read a solicitation into a professional who can build an ORBITAL, score it, price it, and defend it — and who knows that the concepts will outlive every tool this industry will ever invent.