International education provides a venue for students to work with diverse populations while increasing global perspectives (Linder & McGaha, 2014; McBride & Nicholson, 2023). Cultural immersion through these programs allows participants to interrogate cultural assumptions and consider the needs and characteristics of the diverse communities with whom they engage. International education may allow pre-service music educators to begin to challenge the normative practices of the field and consider alternate pedagogies (Marx & Moss, 2011) and forms of music making. Further, short-term study abroad/away programs can be as transformative as semester-based programs (Donnelly-Smith, 2009). However, less than 3% of U.S. undergraduate students study abroad (NAFSA, 2023), and while many collegiate music education programs provide travel opportunities, travel is often divorced from a framework or explicitly avoids issues of equity. This session reports on a one-week “study away” program in Puerto Rico for preservice music education teachers in the U.S. Students studied the music and dance forms of Puerto Rico and Mainland U.S.’s colonial relationship with the island so that they may be culturally responsive to the growing Puerto Rican diasporic communities (and other communities) on the mainland. To these aims, the activities of this program included: Classes on Afro-Caribbean Bomba and Plena at the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico and local community groups. Classes stressed musical, kinesthetic, and political aspects of these musics and their historical roots as music of enslaved people. Meetings with house representatives of the independence party, which historically has been violently persecuted by the U.S. government (Denis, 2015), stressing the island’s status as a U.S. colony. Visits to public schools to engage in comparative education and explore cultural differences/alignments. A visit to a local community group focused on Afro-Caribbean culture and activism to stop gentrification and environmental degradation by increased tourism. We organized the program around Jackson’s (2016) framework for global competency, where students acquire knowledge in the following realms: investigate the world; weigh perspectives; communicate ideas; take action; apply disciplinary/interdisciplinary expertise. Through this framework, globally competent students—and educators—can effectively communicate verbally and non-verbally with diverse audiences. Pairing this framework with practical elements of a study abroad program, we will address prominent issues in study abroad, including: Intercultural development; deficit perspectives; globalization; practices to internationalize (music) teacher education; planning within curricular requirements; and logistics, including health and safety issues.