Latest news with #KatieMoran
Glasgow Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Glasgow Times
Glasgow hotel manager recognised at Acorn Awards 2025
David Morgan, the assistant conference and events manager at voco Grand Central in Glasgow, has been celebrated as one of the UK's youngest rising stars at this year's Acorn Awards. The awards, run by The Caterer, acknowledge 30 of the country's most promising hospitality professionals under 30 for their innovation, dedication, and influence in the industry. Since joining in 2021, David has become a vital part of the voco Grand Central team, earning admiration from both colleagues and guests for his work ethic and attentive leadership. Read more: UK restaurant chain's first Glasgow venue edges closer to opening (Image: Supplied) David said: "This is an unexpected honour and a real career highlight that I am delighted to be able to celebrate. "I feel incredibly lucky to be recognised alongside such talented individuals within the hospitality industry." David's connection to the historic hotel runs deep. His nana worked in the same building over 45 years ago, and he is now proudly following in her footsteps, all while studying for a hospitality management degree at Glasgow Caledonian University. David said: "It's also especially meaningful to be following in the footsteps of Katie Moran, our operations director here at voco Grand Central - and to honour my Nana, who worked in F&B in this very building over 45 years ago, just like me! "I hope she would be proud." Marcello Ventisei, general manager at voco Grand Central, said: "David exemplifies everything we stand for at voco – professionalism, passion and potential. "We're all incredibly proud of him. "From day one, he's brought energy and excellence to our team, and we're thrilled to see that recognised nationally." Read more: Glasgow housing association secures more than £500k for tenants Katie Moran, operations director and fellow Acorn Award alumna, said: "Having won an Acorn myself, I know how much this means - and David's very deserving of this accolade. "He's a rising star in every sense and brings such heart and drive to our hotel. "The future is bright for him, and this is only the beginning." Since 1986, the Acorn Awards have been a marker of success for young talent in the hospitality industry, with previous winners including Gordon Ramsay and Jason Atherton. David now joins this prestigious alumni list — proudly representing Glasgow on a national stage.
Reuters
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
California considers scrapping revamped bar exam after botched test rollout
April 30 (Reuters) - The California Supreme Court could ditch the state's redesigned bar exam in July amid mounting criticism of the new test's problem-plagued February debut. In a 65-page petition, opens new tab filed on Tuesday to the high court, the State Bar of California introduced the potential return of the Multistate Bar Exam, which is the multiple-choice component of the national bar exam produced by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The petition also asked the court to approve several scoring adjustments meant to address the various technical issues February bar examinees faced. The state bar administered a new bar exam in February that was given both remotely and in-person and did not use any components of the national bar exam. That change was expected to save as much as $3.8 million annually by eliminating the need to rent out large event spaces, but the exam was marred by various technical and logistical problems. The state bar now projects that addressing those problems in July will cost at least $2.3 million more than anticipated. Test takers and legal academics have also questioned the development and quality of the 200 multiple questions that appeared on the exam. Katie Moran, co-director of the academic and bar exam success program at the University of San Francisco School of Law and a vocal critic of the February test, said on Wednesday that the court should restore the MBE. 'After reading their petition, it is the most prudent thing to do given the number of issues with questions on the exam,' Moran said. The State Bar acknowledged that the California Supreme Court may opt to revert to the MBE 'so that there is not a risk that the process improvements are not effectively implemented before the next administration of bar examination," while also laying out its plans to improve the vetting and oversight of its multiple-choice questions for the upcoming July exam. The California Supreme Court has already ordered the July bar exam to be administered in person at testing centers. A spokesperson for the national conference said it would need a decision by June 10 to make the MBE available to California for the July exam. California produces its own bar exam essay and performance tests, but until February had used the MBE for the multiple-choice section. A California Supreme Court spokesperson said on Wednesday that the court had just received the petition and did not yet have any comment on it. A state bar spokesperson did not immediately provide comment Wednesday on the petition or the potential restoration of the MBE. Legal academics in California have pushed for the return of the MBE. Deans of 14 of California's 17 American Bar Association-accredited law schools requested that the MBE be used in July and that all of February's multiple-choice questions be released to the public for review, in an April 25 letter to California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero. After California bar exam chaos, state poised to nix remote testing
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
California Admits AI Was Used to Write Bar Exam Plagued by Problems
Now here's a legal-drama-worthy twist in the recent spate of dumb lawyers getting caught using AI: it turns out that the very bar exam administered to aspiring attorneys in California was itself created with the help of a large language model, The Los Angeles Times reports. The admission was made by the State Bar of California on Monday, following complaints about the quality of the test's questions, and numerous glitches experienced by test-takers when they took it in February. In a news release, the organization said that 23 of the exam's total of 171 scored multiple-choice questions were drafted by the firm ACS Ventures, which developed the questions "with the assistance of AI." Another 48 questions were lifted from an older version of an exam for first-year law students. "The debacle that was the February 2025 bar exam is worse than we imagined," Mary Basick, assistant dean of academic skills at UC Irvine Law School, told the LA Times. "I'm almost speechless. Having the questions drafted by non-lawyers using artificial intelligence is just unbelievable." Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, called it a "staggering admission." The same company that used AI to draft the questions was then paid "to assess and ultimately approve of the questions on the exam, including the questions the company authored," she noted to the newspaper. For weeks, test takers had complained that they were randomly kicked off the online platform that the bar was administered on, while screens lagged and showed error messages, per the reporting. The test itself was riddled with typos, and some questions were total nonsense. Despite these complaints — and despite pleading guilty to AI usage — a spokesperson for the State Bar insisted that the test questions were reviewed by content validation panels and subject matter experts. In any case, the whole situation sounds like a mortifying catastrophe. For one, the Supreme Court of California, of which the State Bar is an administrative arm, maintains it had no idea about the use of AI to create the test questions until this week — even though it had instructed the State Bar to explore the use of AI to "improve upon the reliability and cost-effectiveness of such testing" last fall, according to Alex Chan, chair of the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners. Casting additional scrutiny, Basick and Moran argued that the exam questions, which should take years to develop, were drafted far too quickly, while 50 practice questions re-released just weeks before the actual exam contained numerous errors, they wrote early this month, per the LA Times. What spurred the dubious measures sounds like a familiar tale of disastrous cost-cutting. Faced with a $22 million deficit last year, the State Bar ditched the commonly used National Conference of Bar Examiners' Multistate Bar Examination, and decided to transition to a hybrid model of in-person and remote testing. To create the new test, it inked a $8.25 million deal with Kaplan Exam Services, and contracted Meazure Learning to administer it. In a fittingly legal result, Meazure Learning is now being sued by some of the students who took the glitchy exams. The State Bar said it will ask the California Supreme Court to adjust test scores for those who took the test in February. Chan said that the Committee of Bar Examiners will meet on May 5 to discuss other remedies, but doubted that the State Bar would release the exam questions to the public or go back to the NCBE. More on AI: Judge Goes Ballistic When Man Shows AI-Generated Video in Court
