Following more than a year of debate and revisions, a proposed policy change for a faculty disciplinary process will be forwarded to the Legislature for consideration.

A special Board of Regents committee presented its resolution to the full board Friday, which congratulated committee members on their final product and unanimously voted it through.

"I think we can actually say that we've gone from A to double Z," joked Regent Mike Spector, chair of the special committee. "It's been an interesting journey."

The journey Spector referenced began last year when it was revealed three UW faculty members had remained on the payroll even after being convicted of serious felonies.

Comparative literature professor Lewis Keith Cohen, assistant medical school professor Steven Clark and medical physiology professor Roberto Coronado have all since been terminated from their positions at UW.

But to UW's critics, the removal of the professors from the university and the payroll took an unreasonably long time, and Regent President David Walsh appointed the special committee — the Committee on Faculty and Academic Staff Disciplinary Process — to review the current policy and propose relevant revisions.

Following five meetings between November 2005 and February 2006 where committee members hammered out details according to Walsh's request, the committee developed a proposal for an expedited procedure to be used in cases of serious criminal misconduct.

That proposal was subsequently forwarded to faculty governance groups across the state for review, and many sounded off in response to what they believed was disregard for due process or attacks on tenure.

After collecting faculty feedback this past summer, the board revised its proposal — loosening its structure in many of the places faculty had been up in arms over.

But that did not mark the end of tense relations between the regents and faculty governance groups, as several faculty representatives pointed to a statute of state law that they say calls for shared authority between themselves and the board when promulgating rules regarding tenure and dismissal.

"This is the only tiny little area where faculty has a say that counts," Steven Underwood, a Madison attorney who has represented the Committee on Academic Freedom and Rights for the past 10 years, said in a previous interview with The Badger Herald. "[The faculty groups] are as rational and sane and responsible as you can find. They should have a say."

Since then, the board met with faculty representatives on several occasions to gather input, and according to Spector their "very well thought out and very persuasive comments" were an "integral" part of the final resolution.

In addition, Spector addressed the board Friday with concerns over the problems of shared governance that became a hurdle early on in the process.

"We ought to discuss going forward with some kind of a process to deal with problems like this," he said, "so we can implement shared governance perhaps in a little easier way than we were able to this time."

According to UW System President Kevin Reilly, he has already met with faculty representatives and is "looking forward" to continued discussion over changes to how shared governance is implemented.