I did come across DKMS during my research on solving the problem, and spent some time trying to figure out how to get it set up, but fizzled out in my attempts to get it working. Do you know of any more extensive tutorials on the matter? Real-world examples would also be hugely helpful. I couldn't find much. Thanks!
I really love Arch, even though I don't use it on a daily basis anymore the community wiki is the best resource I've found for guides on how to do a large number of tasks with the kernel that can work in most other distros.