He became increasingly unhappy with the department's unwillingness to support astronomy, and in 1990 he moved to CTIO in Chile where he remained until his death in 2001.

Schommer carried out some of the first charge-coupled device (CCD) imaging studies of Large Magellanic Cloud star clusters, published in a paper on what is now called the "short distance" to the LMC.

Schommer was an active member of the High-z Supernova Search Team and co-authored their 1998 paper arguing that we live in an accelerating universe with a cosmological constant.

He was an advocate for a strong national observatory that would allow U.S. astronomers access to world-class, ground-based facilities.

At the time of his death, Schommer was in the process of moving to Tucson, Arizona to establish a U.S. Gemini Science Center and a remote observing facility.